


To make the angels weep

by PunkyNemo (TheVampireCat)



Category: Daredevil (TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Healing, Mild Smuttiness, Sexual Content, Stray Dogs, Trauma, always angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-31
Updated: 2018-09-12
Packaged: 2019-07-05 02:17:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 21
Words: 29,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15854184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheVampireCat/pseuds/PunkyNemo
Summary: He thinks he's saving a dog. He's really saving himself.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [beetleboots](https://archiveofourown.org/users/beetleboots/gifts).



> Okay this was another one that kind of overtook me. It was based on a tumblr prompt from Sarma and Mostlyactorsandfood. The whole thing is written except the epilogue (and possibly the very last chapter) so I will posting a chapter or two every day or so for the next little while, depending on the length of the chapter. This story didn't fit into neat chunks so you'll find some chapters are quite short and others are lengthier. I feel weird about having a bunch of short chapters but I'm going to have to learn to live with it, I guess.
> 
> Hope you like it. Please let me know if you do.

“There’s a dog out there.”

 

She’s mostly shadow as she stands at his window looking out onto the street - the only light coming from a set of flickering tea candles on the coffee table and the gentle glow of the waning moon. 

 

It’s dark here. Dark as him. Dark as her too.

 

Still, her hair is golden and her eyes shine blue like sapphires against her alabaster skin, and it’s one of those nights when it feels like he can’t look at her enough; like he needs to eat her with his eyes before he can look away. 

 

Sometimes he even does. Sometimes she notices too.

 

But not now. Not tonight. 

 

Tonight her gaze is fixed at the alleyway outside his shitty apartment with its putrid dumpsters which overflow regularly into the street, and its dark nooks and crannies which he’s pretty much kicking dealers and junkies out of on a daily basis.

 

Yeah, he knows… He  _ knows  _ it’s no place to bring a lady, and yet here she is. Here she is shining in the gloom, a ray of pure light and goodness in the dark and decay.

 

She doesn't belong.

 

She belongs more than she'll ever know.

 

He should move out - he knows this too. He should find some place nice, a place he can bring her and they can sit and talk and drink like they always do, and not worry about distinguishing gunshots from cars backfiring or having him tail her home when it gets late and she wants to leave. He has the money and the means, but part of him is still doing penance. Part of him thinks he doesn’t deserve it.

 

_ You don’t deserve her either, not like that’s stopped you. _

 

This is also true.

 

He gets up from the couch, steps over her shoes where they lie discarded on the floor, comes up behind her and hands her her beer. He stands close enough so he can smell the honey cream of her hair, and puts a gentle hand on her shoulder and when she leans into it, he tries not to wonder about what that means.

 

“Over there,” she points towards the space between two of the dumpsters where the shadows are darkest and deepest. He can’t see a damned thing, let alone a dog.

 

“You sure?” he asks.

 

She takes a sip of her beer, bobs her head. “Yeah, just give it a minute.”

 

He’ll give it a minute, he’ll give it much longer if it means standing here with her like this - his hands on her, the heat of her body warming him through his clothes, the scent of her heady and sweet in the night air.

 

He wonders if she feels it too - if she’s doing as shitty a job of guarding her heart as he is of guarding his; if in those moments when she looks at him like he is so much more than he really is, she’s thinking of the future and whether they have a chance or not.

 

He knows it’s crazy. Karen Page is nowhere near as stupid as him. She knows this can never work. She probably doesn’t give it much thought.

 

Probably better that way too.

 

Still, that brings up all sorts of questions. Questions like why they do this, why they sit here in the candlelight, sometimes drinking, sometimes talking, sometimes doing nothing at all but being with one another. Questions like why it's okay for him to put his hands between her shoulder blades, rub her back slow and firm, fingers brushing the soft skin of her neck and tangling in her hair and never taking it further than that even though her skin flushes with goosebumps and he's harder than a diamond.

 

These are questions that maybe don't need answers. Not yet anyway. 

 

“There,” she says again, pointing towards what seems like a whole lot of nothing.

 

He squints into the gloom. “You got a secret life as a spotter you ain't ever told me about?” He asks. “Marines could use you.”

 

She snorts, takes another sip of her drink.

 

“It's right there Frank.”

 

He shuffles closer, hand dropping from her shoulder to her hip, squeezing her gently through her blue pencil skirt which hugs her curves in ways he probably shouldn't notice.

 

Karen Page has ways of showing him just how not dead he is. Most of the time she doesn't even need to try.

 

“Can't see it,” he says and she sighs.

 

“Just wait.”

 

He doesn't mind waiting either. Not like this. Not with her leaning against him and his hands dragging her closer. He could stay like this forever.

 

He’d be happy to.

 

In fact, part of him wishes this elusive dog would stay hidden and give him an excuse not to leave.

 

But then he sees it. It moves out of the dark slowly, fearfully, the shadow it casts behind it bigger and fiercer than it could ever be.

 

It's a pitbull. Thin. Emaciated almost. He can count every rib and its fur is dull and patchy, back legs lumpy. It snuffles through some scrunched up newspapers, licks at a dirty puddle of rain water and then seemingly sensing it's being watched, it sniffs the air and glances up at them.

 

He's not sure how much it sees. Dogs aren't exactly known for having good vision at the best of times, but its eyes lock with his and for a moment he imagines that it's begging.

 

_ Save me. Please. _

 

He knows how that feels.

 

And then it's slinking off and disappearing into the dark, swallowed up in the Hell’s Kitchen shadows and whatever monsters are lurking inside them.

 

They don't speak for a while. She leans back, rests her head against his shoulder and his thumb caresses her hip and then her belly. He wonders what she'd do if he leaned in and kissed her now. Nothing heavy, nothing intense, just a brush of his lips against her temple, her hair. 

 

So he does, and she shivers against him and that's enough.

 

“You seen it before?” she asks after a while and she doesn't bother to disguise the huskiness in her voice.

 

He shakes his head. “No.”

 

“Poor thing,” she says turning away from him and leaving a cold patch behind as she heads across the room to slip her shoes on. “Just needs someone to love it.”

 

_ Don't we all Karen Page? Don't we all? _

 

~~~

 

He follows her home. She tells him he doesn't need to and he tells her he does and that seems to be enough for her.

 

She fights him on some things - usually when she thinks he's trying to do something in her name, trying to mask his bloodlust with her safety - but not on this.

 

She gets it. He can't describe how grateful he is that she does.

 

She doesn't invite him up to her apartment - she hasn't since that first time when he hid under a blanket and she found herself charmed enough to forgive him for all those trespasses she once swore was the end of them and anything they could have been. 

 

He doesn't mind though -  he thinks it's because they both know how difficult it would be for him to leave if she does. With his place at least there's always that undercurrent of urgency no matter how languid the pace they set. She doesn't belong. She shouldn't be there and Hell’s Kitchen only gives them so much time before it becomes too obvious that she's too good for it.

 

But maybe -  _ maybe  _ \- they both know he could find a way to fit in with her. He could be a gentleman - he knows how, he really does. 

 

He could belong too.

 

So no, there’s no awkward invitation for a night cap, there's no expectation of it either. He doesn't hug her goodbye. He doesn't even get out the car. She waves and he does too and then he watches as she disappears into her building, waits until her light comes on through her window and he wishes with all his heart he was up there with her.

 

He would wonder just how fucked he truly is if he didn't know already.

 

~~~

 

_ Save me. _

 

He stands in the alleyway, plastic takeout container of kibble in one hand, water in the other.

 

He doesn’t think the dog is there, but then again Karen Page showed him his eyes aren’t all that anymore. Could be one too many blows to the head, could be the bullet still lodged in his brain. Or maybe - and more likely - he’s just getting old. Complacent. He finds he doesn’t hate that idea as much as he should.

 

Still, he lets out a low whistle, softens his voice as much as he can and tries to swallow the gravel out of it.

 

“Come here girl,” he calls. “Come here.”

 

He has no idea whether the dog is a girl or not. He doesn’t think it matters, because the alley is dank and deserted - quiet, except for the gentle pitter patter of the early spring rain.

 

He sighs, heads to the cramped space between the two dumpsters where Karen noticed the dog the first time. It stinks of garbage and stale piss but the awning from the windows means the ground is dry and it’s out of the wind too, so all things considered it’s better than nothing.

 

He wrestles a piece of cardboard out of the trash, lays it down and puts the bowls on top, pushes them back against the alley wall into the shadows. It’s still chilly out and he hasn’t seen any sign of flies or roaches yet, so it should be okay to leave it out here at least for the night. He hopes by the time creepy crawly season is in full swing, this whole thing will be resolved.

 

He’s not quite sure how though. Not quite sure what he’d do with the dog if he catches her. And it’s not like pitbulls with shady backstories are in demand in a neighbourhood full of gangs and drugs, but at the same time he knows what it’s like to be alone and frightened in a world that has very little time or place for you. He knows what it’s like to think it’s all over and there’s no point in carrying on. 

 

He knows what it’s like when someone shows you that isn’t true.

 

Somewhere behind him he thinks he hears a low bark.

 

_ Save me. _

 

Okay dog, okay. I’ll try.


	2. Chapter 2

He does try. He does. But it’s not easy. Then again nothing worth doing ever is.

 

The next morning the food is gone but there’s no sign of the dog. He carries the bowls inside, washes them up and goes through the motions of living his life.

 

The truth is there isn’t much to live. It’s not like before. It’s not like those nights he stayed up breaking down walls until dawn came, it’s not like the nights when he was too exhausted to do even that that he could just lie in his bed and think about dying and killing and punishing. That might be there in his bones, it might be something he’ll always carry with him, but he’s better at it now.

 

He’s _dealing_ , according to Curtis. And dealing leads to _healing_. He has a routine and he has goals and yes, he has her… in whatever capacity she might be willing to give herself to him.

 

And that’s a whole new set of problems he never thought he’d have again.

 

He’s not sure what him and Karen Page are.  That’s been a question he hasn’t ever had an answer to, right up from the first moment she walked into his hospital room holding Murdock’s hand until wherever he is at any given moment in the present.

 

He doesn’t know and he’s mostly okay with not knowing.

 

It’s more than friends - of that he’s sure. It’s less than lovers - of that he’s less sure but he finds he can tell himself this is true because he’s never taken her to bed and truthfully never made any kind of move in that direction either. He adamantly refuses to count the back rubs and the chaste kisses nor the hugs that linger longer than they should as sexual. Intimate yes, but not sexual.

 

He wonders how much longer he can keep that lie afloat.

 

David’s pushing him to ask her out - make it official - and Curtis keeps telling him he’s chickenshit and a girl like that isn’t going to wait around forever.

 

Curtis is right. David can go fuck himself.

 

Still, there’s always the chance she’s going to one day randomly announce she’s found someone, that she can’t keep coming round because he - Matt, let’s be real, it’ll be Red - and her are together now and this thing that they have that isn’t really a thing at all, is over.

 

It scares him how much that scares him. It scares him how easy it is to imagine that happening and to picture just how deep that chasm is in front of him, how far into it he’ll fall.

 

It doesn’t matter though. There’s a lot to consider. A lot of “what ifs”.

 

What if he really is just deluding himself? What if she really doesn’t care for him in the way he hopes? What if this is all headed for disaster? What if he destroys her? What if he can’t love her the way she deserves? What if what he does have to give isn’t enough?

 

_What if she dies because of him?_

 

Yeah… that last one. That last one is a bitch.

 

Sure they _say_ lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same place. Karen Page is living proof that it’s a lie.

 

So he keeps it quiet, he keeps it lowkey. He doesn’t push and neither does she. He tells himself he’s being careful, that he’s making sure he keeps his head in all this, that he’s giving himself a way to walk out at any point.

 

He tells himself a lot of things.

 

He’s not going to walk out. He’s never going to walk out until she makes him. He loves her far too much for that and it doesn’t matter that maybe she doesn’t love him back. He's not keeping his head. He never has.

 

He’s here. He’s fallen. And when he falls there’s no going back.

 

~~~

 

He leaves food out on Saturday and Sunday too. On both occasions it’s gone the next morning along with any sign of the dog.

 

On Monday, he goes down to Target and buys twelve cans of duck and chicken dog food and a bag of kibble, two proper dog bowls and a cheap but heavy blanket and a leash. He nearly catches himself buying a collar and a kong before he comes to his senses and puts it back on the shelf.

 

He’s not getting himself a pet, he’s saving a life.

 

He tells himself a lot of things.

 

At home, he digs out a pair of rubber gloves and some industrial cleaner from under the sink, boils a few buckets of water and heads out into the alley where he proceeds to spend most of the afternoon scrubbing the area between the dumpsters until he’s pretty sure even Red wouldn’t be able to smell the stale piss and dried semen.

 

It’s an improvement, albeit a small one.

 

After dark he slides the cardboard and the blanket into the alcove with the bowl of food and fresh water and then he goes inside, grabs some leftover Italian takeout from the fridge and goes to sit on the windowsill so he can watch the street below.

 

And he sits and he waits and he drinks a beer, and eventually it’s well after midnight and either his eyes are worse than he thought or he’s been stood up by a stray dog.

 

He wouldn’t blame it. He’s not exactly a great catch anyway.

 

He rinses his plate, throw his beer bottle into the recycling and falls into bed.


	3. Chapter 3

He puts flowers on her grave. 

 

Peonies. Her favourite.

 

He goes the same time every week. Wednesdays at 4pm just before the graveyard closes for the night. It stops him lingering too long. It stops him wallowing. 

 

He looks at it as a visit, a little catch up.

 

_ Hey babe, how you doing? How are the kids? Junior must be so big now. And Lisa? God, she's a teenager already. Of course she's getting all A’s. Of course she is - she was always smart like her mother. What? What’s that you say? Who is Jonathan? What do you mean he took her out for a milkshake? No I don't care there were other kids there. Who is he? What do you know about him? Who are his parents? What do they do? No babe, I'm not overreacting. I will find him and I will… _

 

And so it goes.

 

He wonders if he's truly lost his mind sometimes. He wonders if anyone would tell him if he had. He thinks Karen would. She's direct, she's never had a problem calling him out and she doesn't soften the blow just because it's him and he comes with more baggage than any one human being should foist on another. 

 

Some days he thinks she just might be the best thing left in the world. He knows she's definitely the best thing in his life.

 

He doesn't deserve that. He doesn't deserve her either.

 

The peonies flutter in the breeze and he touches Maria’s gravestone.

 

_ Is this okay? Is it okay that this is how I feel? Is it okay that in some way there might be someone else? Does it hurt you as much as it hurts me? _

 

The stone is cold under his hand and he knows that despite his need for it to be true, Maria isn't there. Neither is Lisa or Junior.

 

There’s only him. And her.

 

And somewhere there’s a dog and it needs his help.

 

He gets in his truck and drives home.


	4. Chapter 4

A strange thing he’s discovered about his new life of healing and dealing is that at the end of the day, it’s boring. It’s boring as shit. He knows he’s something of an anomaly. He doesn’t have a job, he doesn’t have people depending on him to be okay - at least not anymore. He has the money from David and if he’s smart with it - which he is - it should be more than enough to keep him comfortable and see him well into old age - if he ever gets there.

 

So he has the time and the means and frankly the privilege of being able to do nothing but heal and deal… Which in many ways amounts to a whole lot of nothing other than what he makes of it.

 

And that in itself is a problem.

 

He tries to get out of the apartment - Curt says that's important. He shouldn't be sitting at home like a ghost knowing the world is doing its own thing outside without him. So most mornings he makes himself a flask of coffee and heads out to the park to watch the early morning joggers trying to beat their records, the suits making their way to work, and moms and dads getting their kids off to school. Twice a week he goes to a hipster coffee shop that makes up for its beardy baristas and shitty music with superb coffee and the best eggs in Hell’s Kitchen. He reads the paper, scanning it for Karen's name and trying to ignore the little flip flop his belly does when he finds it.

 

In the afternoons he tries to go down to the gym where he spends a few hours beating up a punching bag until he's covered in sweat. Sometimes it helps with the rage. Most of the time it just helps with the routine.

 

And then, if it's group night he sticks around and helps Curt set up and he stays late afterwards to help him clean up too.

 

The Liebermans have him over at least once a week and sometimes on weekends too depending on what they're doing. It's nice and he knows they like him and want what's best for him and, even though he knows he's a living walking example of a fifth wheel, they never make him feel like he is. And Sarah always accidentally on purpose overcaters and sends him home with enough food to last a couple of days.

 

And all of this is good and all of this gives him a sense of purpose.

 

But then there's Friday night.

 

 _Their_ night.

 

And he doesn't know why someone as perfect as Karen Page chooses to spend those with him. Her time is precious and he's sure she has better options. That isn't even a question.

 

But there she is, 6:30 like clockwork, beers in one hand and takeout in the other.

 

And nothing compares to it. Not one thing in his life comes remotely close to the feeling he gets when he hears her heels clicking in time to his heart on the tiles outside his apartment. And then her key is sliding into the lock and he's waiting for her as she pushes the door open, and he's taking her bags out of her arms and giving her his heart in their place.

 

It's worth about as much as cheap takeout but it's all he has.

 

_Keep it safe Karen. Please._

 

~~~

 

She leans against the kitchen wall, drinking a beer while he dishes up. It's sushi and he doesn't have proper boards but he makes do with the meagre crockery he has. It's not like his place is set up for entertaining but that's never bothered her before.

 

She's not wearing any shoes and for some reason that makes him feel more relaxed than it should. They have time. She's not going anywhere.

 

He asks about her week and she tells him Ellison has taken a well deserved vacation to see friends in Montreal and she's been covering for him.

 

She sounds a little shocked she's been entrusted to do this, says it's probably nothing but she didn't expect he’d be so eager to hand this amount of responsibility off to her.

 

He says the only surprising thing is that her asshole boss has friends.

 

She snorts and takes a sip of her beer and he tells himself he's not watching the way the way the muscles in her throat work as she swallows.

 

“Didn't you say they're hiring for a deputy editor?” He asks as he pours the soy sauce into a ramekin.

 

“Yeah,” she says and he looks at her pointedly. “Yeah but I mean… I couldn't…”

 

“Sure you could.”

 

She shakes her head. “I haven't been there all that long and…”

 

“And your boss has left you to do his job while he's away,” he says. “Sounds like he thinks it's long enough.”

 

“There's so many people more qualified than me.”

 

“Yeah, but they ain't you.”

 

She eyes him over her beer, purses her lips.

 

“You have way too much faith in me Frank Castle.”

 

It's his turn to shake his head as he picks up the plates and stops in front of her on his way to lounge.

 

“That’s not a thing that can happen Karen Page,” he says. “That's not even a thing at all.”

 

~~~

 

They sit in front of the TV with the volume all but muted. There's a movie on but from what he can tell it's about undead sharks and no one seems to be particularly worried about what would happen when one of them dies and infects the sea water.

 

Yeah, he worries about shit like that.

 

It's not all bad though. Her feet are in his lap and he's been steadily massaging them for at least the past hour, fingers pressing into her skin, circling her ankles and venturing as high up her calves as he dares.

 

It’s not sexual. It’s not. He tells himself this firmly and in some ways it’s more than partly true. It doesn’t change the fact that she’s soft and languid under his hands and that he’s found if he sweeps his fingertips down her down her leg just so, her skin prickles and she gasps in a way that sends a white hot shard of heat directly to his cock.

 

It’s times like this that he knows he's lost. He loves her. He wants her. He needs her. He’d do anything to spend every waking moment with her … and every sleeping one too.

 

He knows he’d take her to bed if he could just get over himself long enough to do the taking.

 

But there’s something about this too. There’s something about _not_ getting over himself and existing in this place with her where everything is a possibility. He likes not knowing. He likes not having to define. Not yet at least. Maybe one day. Maybe soon.

 

Maybe not soon at all.

 

_She isn't going to wait around forever…_

 

Maybe Curt is right, maybe she won't.

 

But maybe she'll wait around long enough for him.

 

He looks at the gooseflesh on her legs and thinks it might just be possible. It might mean the world needs to turn inside out and upside down. It might mean the stars need to align and that someone somewhere might need to think he's a good man, a decent man. But maybe stranger things have happened too.

 

Maybe.

 

He shouldn’t be thinking like this. He really shouldn’t. She’s a lady.

 

She doesn't belong.

 

But then she reaches out, touches the back of his head right over the place where there's a bullet lodged deep in his brain and he can't help but lean into her.

 

She belongs more than she'll ever know.

 

“Got any wine?” she asks and he nods.

 

“Red? White?”

 

“White.”

 

He nods again and her fingers scrape over his scalp and suddenly she isn't the only with gooseflesh covering her skin.

 

He runs a thumb across the arch of her foot and she shivers.

 

He really doesn't want to go anywhere. Wine be damned. But she's Karen Page. He can't say no to her. He wouldn't want to either.

 

“Okay,” he says, shifting her feet out of his lap. “Why don’t you light the candles? Getting dark in here.”

 

They could always turn on the lights, and it’s not like the glow from the TV isn’t considerable but this is something else they do. And it feels right. What they do shouldn't be done in harsh, artificial light. They were both always part of the shadows. This shouldn't be any different.

 

He goes to the kitchen, hears the click of the remote as she turns the TV off and then the low hiss of a match igniting, and then another.

 

This is one of those moments when he can't believe his life is real. And it's not a bad disbelief. It’s not the kind that comes from finding that everything you love is dead, that life as you knew it is gone, that your world is shattered and scattered in pieces on the ground.

 

Except his world is shattering… And that's okay.

 

Back in the lounge, two glasses of Sauvignon Blanc sweating in his hands and she looks up from the couch, firelight flickering in her hair and her eyes sparkling.

 

He was wrong. They’re not like sapphires, they’re like Tanzanite.

 

She belongs.

 

Maybe he can too.

 

~~~

 

He doesn't rub her feet again. She sits close though, leg resting against his, skirt hiked up to mid thigh. It's smooth like porcelain and he finds his gaze continually drawn back to it and his fingers twitch around his glass.

 

“You find that dog?” she asks and he shakes his head.

 

“I'm trying. Only time she's shown her face is that night you saw her. I'm feeding her though… or I'm feeding something and thinking I'm feeding her.”

 

“It's her,” she says with a confidence she can't possibly have. “I'm sure it is.”

 

“Well I guess she's just using me for my kibble,” he teases. “She doesn't answer my calls, she doesn't write.”

 

“Cupboard love,” she agrees and he grins.

 

“Better work on my game,” he says and she chuckles. “I'm slipping.”

 

He is. This isn't really a joke but if she notices she doesn't say anything.

 

“What are you gonna do when you find her?” she asks putting her glass down next to the candles.

 

He shrugs. To that he has no answer.

 

He's not getting a pet. He's saving a life.

 

The only problem with that is that he might not be doing that at all. Shelters aren't going to be looking to take another dog on, especially not one like that. He'll be taking her off the streets to put her on death row.

 

“I don't know,” he says. “I haven't thought that far.”

 

He puts his glass down too and turns to her. She's very close, closer maybe than what's safe and she smells of honey and orange blossom and he wants to bury his head in her throat and breathe her in until there's nothing left.

 

But there'll always be something left. Karen Page somehow has enough goodness for both of them.

 

She lifts a hand, touches his cheek and it takes all his willpower not to turn his head and kiss her palm, maybe her wrist, the soft skin of her forearm.

 

“You'll save her,” she says firmly. “I know you will.”

 

_Like you saved me Karen Page? I don't know if I get to do that. I don't know if I have enough goodness in me for it._

 

Still, he finds he believes her.

 

They don't lie. She wouldn't lie about this.

 

“You think so?” He asks.

 

“I know so.”

 

_You got a lot of faith in me Karen Page._

 

In his head he hears her voice, clear as a bell.

 

_That's not a thing Frank Castle. That's not a thing at all._

 

~~~

 

Later, when it's way past midnight and they're both semi-asleep on the couch, his arm around her and her head resting in the crook of her neck, so that he can feel her breath warm against his skin, he wonders if he should ask her to stay. He wouldn't put any meaning on it. He'd offer to sleep on the couch. Insist even. Give her the bed.

 

He lets that scenario play out in his head as the candles gutter on the table.

 

She stays. She sleeps in his bed. Tomorrow he's stiff and sore from the couch but it doesn't matter at all because he'd do it every night if it meant keeping her close, if it meant waking up and finding her there. She'd wear one of his old shirts and he'd see more of her thighs than he can now. She'd notice. She also wouldn't care. Her hair would be messy but he'd run a hand through it anyway, kiss the top of her head as he brings her coffee and breakfast. They'd spend the day together, maybe go to the park or the graveyard to do all the things he usually does alone. He likes the symmetry of that. He likes the idea that he can share it with her.

 

He'd take her out for lunch. Make sure it was somewhere nice. If the weather holds maybe they can sit outside. He'd like to see her in the sunlight. He'd like to see if it loves her as much as he does. They wouldn't stay for dessert. He takes her to a little gelato place near the Brooklyn Bridge and then after they stroll along the river. Because there is an after, just like she wanted there to be.

 

At the end of the day he takes her home. At the last second, she kisses him goodbye. She tastes like chocolate and cherry lip gloss. He's too surprised to do anything until he's not. Until he pulls her back into his arms and covers his mouth with hers.

 

He drowns. She does too.

 

_(Ask her out. Make it official.)_

 

_(Girl like that ain't gonna wait around forever.)_

 

“Frank?” her lips brush his skin as she moves.

 

“Yeah?”

 

“I'd better get going.”

 

_No. No please don't say that. In my head you stayed. In my head we had a day together and it was perfect. In my head you didn’t leave. In my head…_

 

He can still salvage this. He can still make the offer.

 

“Karen…”

 

“Got a lot to do tomorrow,” she says as she moves out of his arms and into the shadows, leaving nothing but a cold emptiness in her wake. “I’ve got to do one of my weekend morning shifts and then Matt and Foggy and Claire are coming round in the afternoon for a late lunch. Foggy’s decided we need to play board games because ‘we spend too much time in front of a screen’. I think he just wants to catch up though.”

 

He's pretty sure she hears his heart drop into his boots, he's pretty sure there's no way she could have missed it.

 

“Big day then?”

 

_(Girl like that ain't gonna wait around forever)_

 

“Yeah I guess,” she says as she slips her shoes on. “What about you?”

 

What about him indeed.

 

He shrugs, watches the thread of what could have been fizzle out with the last candle. “Maybe see David or Curt.”

 

Maybe. Perhaps. Probably not.

 

She bites her lip as she looks at him and he knows what she's thinking. He knows she's debating asking him to come around too, play board games with Murdock and Nelson and that pretty dark haired nurse who'd kick his ass into next Tuesday if he put one foot out of place. Make nice like they're all friends and pretend that he doesn't love her so much that his heart breaks into a million pieces when she smiles.

 

He'd go if she asked, if she really wanted him to, if he could be sure it wasn't out of pity. He'd grit his teeth and bear Murdock's disapproving looks and Foggy's reticence. Wouldn't even object to Nurse Temple’s ass kicking. For Karen Page he’d do anything.

 

He thinks the only thing worse than her not asking him to come is if she does. She seems to know it too.

 

The invitation doesn't come.

 

She grabs her purse, slings it over her shoulder. “Guess I'm not going to be able to talk you out of following me home?”

 

He shakes his head. “That’s also not something that can happen.”

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another day, another chapter.
> 
> Please let me know if you're enjoying this.
> 
> xxx

Outside the city is quiet and dark, which is unusual for Hell’s Kitchen with its hazy neon lights and stark shadows, the sound of gunfire like a soundtrack to the lives they live. But not now. Now it's peaceful in a way he's not sure he's ever seen before.

 

They walk to her car and he rests his hand on the small of her back, tells himself she doesn't press against it as they breathe in the night air.

 

He has a sudden desire to hold her, slide his arms around her from behind, drag her back into him so he can bury his face in her shoulder and feel her breathing under his hands. She’d let him do it. He’s pretty sure she’d lean into him too, close her eyes and let her hair cover them like a shroud.

 

It’s something else too though. It’s not just wanting to touch her in ways he probably shouldn’t. It’s not just needing that kind of human contact that’s everything he’s ever wanted since that night she walked away from him in the woods and he realised that no matter how much he’d already lost, he could still lose more. It’s wanting to be there for her. Wanting her to lean on him as much as he’s leant on her.

 

In its own way it would be penance, but he doesn’t know if it counts if it’s something you want to do anyway.

 

He doesn’t do it though. He’s not sure why, but somehow he can’t get over the step where he puts his hands on her, where his fingers dig into her skin and he moves her where he wants her to be.

 

He can’t get over himself.

 

_(Girl like that ain't gonna to wait around forever)_

 

Maybe she can wait for him.

 

“Pretty out here,” she says.

 

“Yeah, yeah it is.”

 

It's the most beautiful thing left in this world.

 

She takes a deep breath and he feels her ribcage expand under his hand and again he imagines what that would feel like if he was holding her, if he had his hands on her skin and he could feel the hard lines of her bones.

 

And he really shouldn't be thinking this. She's a lady. She's also everything else. She doesn't belong, except she really does.

 

“You good to go?” He asks.

 

_Say no, please say no. Say you'll stay. Stay for a minute or stay forever but please just stay. Don't get in that car. Don't end this here._

 

“Yeah,” she says. “Yeah I'm ready.”

 

And then out of the blue she turns to him, one hand coming to rest on the space between his hip and belly, the other gripping his shoulder, and she kisses his cheek softly, lips warm and gentle against his skin.

 

She seems a little surprised at herself when she pulls away, but she doesn't move her hands and she isn't afraid to look into his eyes.

 

“You're very special to me Frank Castle,” she says. “Don't you ever forget that.”

 

_Oh my girl, I won't. I can't. A man doesn't forget a gift like that._

 

He brings his hand to her face, thumb skimming her jaw.

 

“I won't.”

 

“Not a thing that can happen?” she's trying to make her voice sound light but there's a tremble in it, a heaviness that scares him even as it exhilarates him.

 

“Not even a thing, princess.”

 

She smiles and he thinks she'll get into her car - she even starts to dig through her purse for keys - and then she freezes and her eyes fix on something behind him.

 

“Frank,” she says quietly. “Frank, the dog.”

 

He turns slowly, hand trailing over her hip, and squints into the alley.

 

He sees it easily this time - a skinny grey shadow standing right under the light from his window.

 

It's not as emaciated as the first time he saw it, but it seems worse for wear. It's not putting any weight on one of its back legs and he can see patches of mange covering its back and sides.

 

He takes two slow steps forward, goes down on one knee.

 

“C'mere girl,” he calls. “Come on.”

 

The dog's ears prick up and she sniffs the air.

 

“Come on,” he calls. “I ain't gonna hurt you.”

 

He wishes he had something with him, some jerky or dog treats or something, but these are not the kind of things a man keeps in his pockets when he gets to spend the evening with Karen Page.

 

The dog eyes him warily, glances behind her, but he thinks that's more to check she has an escape route than to actually use it.

 

“It's okay,” he says. “You're okay.”

 

He shuffles forward and stops when she takes a step back.

 

 _Come on dog. Come on, I'm trying to save you_. _Just like you asked._

 

He calls again and gets a very nervous tail wag in response.

 

He knows he's going to have to move again at some point. He's got nothing to lure her with and he could stay here all night with the dampness of Hell's Kitchen’s streets seeping into the knees of his jeans and not get any further. He's going to have to trust her to trust him.

 

So he pushes himself up, glances at Karen, and then takes a few slow steps towards the dog.

 

She doesn't do anything so he moves a little closer.

 

Another nervous thump of her tail and a sudden rush of the stench of dirty, sick dog.

 

“It's okay girl. It's okay”

 

It's not okay.

 

He draws level with her, holds out his hand to let her sniff his knuckles and it's too much. Just as he thinks he might stand a chance, she bolts, limping badly but still fast enough to scurry out of sight and back into the shadows.

 

He could chase her. He's in good shape, he can run fast, but he knows it's pointless. When you start chasing a dog you've already lost. You have to make them come to you.

 

Seems like Karen Page already knew that with him. Seems like she didn't need to learn it at all.

 

He turns around and she gives him a rueful smile and then she slides in behind the wheel and there’s nothing left to say.

 

~~~

 

He takes the long way home, driving around in ever decreasing circles. It helps to not think about how empty his apartment is and how it'll stay that way until next Friday, how he'll heal and deal alone and fight his way through another week and another two or three punching bags.

 

It helps with not thinking about Karen and how she's probably already asleep in a bed he's never seen.

 

He hopes her dreams are sweet.

 

So he rolls down the window, lets the night air fill the truck and turns on the radio. There’s a Extreme tribute on some channel David's affectionately dubbed “Dad Rock for Dads” and Gary Cherone is declaring his love is worth more than words so he doesn't need the words to make it real.

 

It's bullshit.

 

Words are important. Words might be the most important thing in the world.

 

He guesses that could be why he gets a little tongue tied when she's around.

 

_“What would you do if my heart was torn in two?”_

 

_Hell, I dunno Gary, maybe tell her you love her before she leaves. A girl like that ain't gonna wait around forever._

 

He guides his truck slowly through empty streets and alleyways and he knows if anyone was watching he'd look like he was kerb crawling. He almost wants to laugh at that. After everything, after Schoonover and Rawlins, after Billy and Lewis, he gets thrown in the slammer for soliciting. He can't imagine Mahoney’s face. He thinks Madani might come a close second.

 

The fact is though that he is looking for a lady to take home. She’s hurt and scared and she walks on three of her all fours, but he feels a huge amount of affection for her and somehow fixing her has become the same as fixing him.

 

The truth is she could be anywhere. This part of the city has so many nooks and crannies, so many shadows and hiding spaces that it's easy to even start believing you can hide from yourself.

 

He did it for a while. It didn't work. It never does.

 

He turns down one empty street and then another but he doesn't see anything. He should have Karen here. Karen with her eagle eyes. But she's at home, asleep and she's not thinking about him and that's probably for the best.

 

_“HOLD ME CLOSE, DON'T EVER LET ME GO.”_

 

_Shut up Gary._

 

He sees a shadow move out of one of the side streets but it's just a couple of teenagers adjusting their clothes and while he has a good mind to give them an earful, he decides not to.

 

He knows he isn't going to find the dog tonight. She's gone, hiding somewhere or zapped out of existence. Tonight isn't the night. He feels it in his bones.

 

All the same he does another loop of the streets before turning into his own. He checks the space between the dumpsters but all he finds are two empty bowls and the rumpled blanket.

 

He takes the bowls, leaves the blanket in case she comes back and needs somewhere to rest and heads inside to fall into bed.

 

He thinks of Karen as he drifts off - her hair like gold and her eyes like Tanzanite.

 

His dreams are sweet too.


	6. Chapter 6

Saturday. He doesn't see David or Curtis. He cleans out the space between the dumpsters again, washes the blanket and goes down to the corner store to buy some treats that smell disgusting but which the clerk assures him are irresistible to dogs.

 

He tries not to let his mind wander to Karen too much. She's living her life and he's part of it and that's enough. He's both blessed and honoured to have that much. He's only selfish for imagining more.

 

In the afternoon he decides to work on some of that healing and dealing and tries to read one of the self help books Curt lent him. It's about coming to terms with loss and moving forward but he can't stomach more than a few pages. He's not sure if it’s because it cuts too close to the bone or not close enough. It says the right words, has all the platitudes and he thinks that maybe for a different person, a better person - a person who is not him - it might work.

 

But he's done the stages of grief. He's done all of them.

 

Shock and denial was massacring the Irish gangs.

 

Pain and guilt was clubbing some sick asshole to death with his own baseball bat.

 

Anger and bargaining was killing Schoonover.

 

Depression, reflection and loneliness was spending nights breaking walls apart with a sledgehammer.

 

The upward turn was murdering Rawlins.

 

Reconstruction was destroying Billy Russo's face.

 

Acceptance and hope was getting Lewis to blow himself up and saving Karen Page’s life all over again.

 

He thinks the author of the book might claim he hasn’t done of any of them. She'd be wrong.

 

Much like clarity, healing comes from the strangest of places.

 

He puts the book back on his shelf, digs out a dog-eared copy of _Proserpine_ by Mary Shelley, finds himself intrigued enough to carry on reading it well into the evening and when he looks up the sky has gone dim outside and there's a message flashing on his phone.

 

He swipes his finger across the screen and Karen's face pops up.

 

_“I miss you.”_

 

He smiles, runs his finger over her picture.

 

_I miss you. I love you. I need you. I want you._

 

He doesn't say any of those things. He is, after all, chickenshit. He is, after all, the guy who won't make it official.

 

David can still go fuck himself but it doesn't mean he's wrong.

 

_“Me too, my girl.”_

 

It's lame, but it's something.

 

Words are important after all.

 

~~~

 

The following week is exactly like the one before.

 

Healing. Dealing. Walks in the park which become jogs. Beating the stuffing out of punching bags. Group. Maria. Always Maria.

 

There's no sign of the dog, other than the empty bowls and the blanket being rumpled and slept on, covered in fleas. He calls to her. He looks for her again but his search yields nothing. He wonders if he should get a trap but he thinks she might be too smart for that. Most of the women in his life are too smart for him.

 

He sees David and Sarah for a drink on Thursday. The kids are away at some or other school camp until Monday and they're trying to make the most of it and somehow seemed to think seeing him was important. He's gone from fifth wheel to third. Isn't that a fucking joke?

 

David presses about Karen, reiterates that it's time to make it official, whatever the fuck ‘official’ might mean. Sarah gets it though. Of everyone in the world she gets what it's like to be lonely and how the prospect of moving on is the scariest thing in the world. She's the only one who knows how it feels to suddenly be alone in a world you thought you understood. She's also the only one who knows how difficult that can be when that changes, even if that change is for the better.

 

“You take your time,” she says when she hugs him goodbye.

 

He thinks he might be tired of taking his time.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just one tonight because I think this is my favourite chapter.
> 
> Let me know if you liked it too.

“I always wanted a dog.”

 

It's late again and the candles are burning low. She's leaning forward, elbows on her knees and a glass of wine in her hands, and he's rubbing her back in slow deliberate movements, letting his fingers tangle in her hair.

 

“Yeah?”

 

She nods, bites her lip and looks away.

 

Karen Page has secrets. He knows this. He's always known this.

 

“Maybe just a pet, didn't have to be a dog,” she says. “I would have been happy with a cat too. Something of my own you know?”

 

Yeah, yeah he does know what it's like to have something of your own.

 

“You never got one?”

 

She shakes her head, gulps her wine.

 

“No.”

 

“You could get one now?”

 

Another shake. “Not with the schedules I keep.”

 

“Guess not, Miss Deputy Editor.”

 

She smiles then, turns to look at him and it's another of those nights when he knows he could look at her forever. Forever and forever and forever.

 

“It's not official yet,” she says.

 

“It will be.”

 

“How do you know?”

 

“I just do.”

 

“Could still do it I guess,” she says and it takes a moment for him to realise they're talking about pets again.

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Yeah,” she says. “Guess even a home where you work long hours is better than the street or a small cage in a shelter.”

 

He nods, walks his fingers up her spine so that she shivers.

 

“Be nice to save something,” she continues. “Give it a new start.”

 

_Oh my god, my girl, don't you know you've already done it?_

 

He tugs at her a bit then, hand trailing up to her up her arm and pulling her into him so that her head rests in the curve of his shoulder.

 

Briefly, he wonders what the fuck they think they're doing like this; where they think this is going and how it can even go anywhere. It's not that he's off his game. It's not even that he hasn’t been in this kind of a situation for the best part of two decades, it’s that this is totally different from anything that came before it. He's never had something like this. He'd wager she hasn't either.

 

“You could do it if you wanted. I could help,” he says. “You'd be good at it.”

 

“You too,” she pauses then and he watches the firelight flickering in her hair, turning into silver and then red. “You ever have a dog before? I mean other than…”

 

She trails off and he knows she's talking about Max. He still feels guilty as shit about Max.

 

“Yeah,” he says. “When I was growing up, we had dogs, cats too.”

 

“Must have been nice.”

 

“It was,” he lifts his hand, runs his fingers through her hair. “Wanted to get a dog for the kids. We looked after a buddy’s Labrador once when Lisa was four. She loved him, called him Penny even though his name was Lenny and he had a pair of nuts to match.”

 

She huffs softly.

 

“After the book? Penny and dime?”

 

A little shiver courses through him then and she looks up at him like she’s said something wrong. But she hasn’t. She couldn’t. It’s might be too close to home but it doesn’t feel like it is. It feels like he can tell her anything and it wouldn’t matter. It would be okay.

 

“Yeah…” he says. “Kids should have a pet you know. S’good for them.”

 

She nods, and then her head is back on his shoulder, and he runs his hand through a lock of her hair, twists it through his fingers.

 

“It was a lot to put on Maria though. She was already a single mom for a lot of the time. We had enough money that she didn't need to worry but she was raising a family on her own and I was stopping in for playtime for a lot of it. Didn't want to give her a dog to worry about too… not then.”

 

“Later maybe.”

 

Later. If they'd had a chance to be a family. If she'd lived. If he'd lived too.

 

But they didn't. Except somehow he did. 

 

"Yeah maybe..." he says.

 

"Would have been nice."

 

He thinks Karen is the only one he'd let speak to him like this. He thinks if David or even Curtis tried he'd shut them down. But not her. Never her.

 

She knows how to get inside him and tear him apart and make him thank her for it.

 

“It would have,” he says. “I wasn't gonna go back to the marines. I was gonna stay, get myself a desk job. You imagine that? Me? At a desk?”

 

She snorts. “You at a desk, running spec ops maybe.”

 

“I was thinking less spec ops and more selling houses…”

 

“Frank, enough people are terrified of you. It would only get worse if you become an estate agent,” she teases and he laughs, tightens his arm around her.

 

“Okay, I'll avoid real estate then. Investment banker?”

 

“You gonna glare the share prices up and down?”

 

“Maybe.”

 

She chuckles and he rubs her shoulder, presses his fingers along the line of her collarbones. She's smooth and soft and she still smells of honey cream and orange blossom. He wonders what it would be like to put his mouth there. She'd taste sweet. He knows she would.

 

“I was gonna stay,” he says softly and she seems to sense the change in his mood and she rests a hand on his belly. “Things were changing. I was changing…”

 

He doesn't know how much of this she actually knows. She's sharp. She doesn't miss anything and it doesn't take a genius to connect the dots of all the things he's told her about his life away from war and realise the toll it took on him and, consequently, on Maria.

 

She might know it all, she might not spend much time thinking about it, but he tells her anyway.

 

“You don't come back from that the same. You just don't. Maria knew that from the start, and in the beginning it was okay. We could work with it, move past it. But when my wife started looking at me like she didn't know me, when she started asking me if I still wanted to be with her and the kids… that's when I knew that none of it mattered. Something had to change.”

 

He puts his hand over hers on his belly, traces the bumps of her knuckles, the veins under her skin, the delicate bones of her wrist.

 

“They loved you very much Frank,” she says. “They loved you more than you knew.”

 

He nods silently, presses his lips to her hair.

 

“It would have been good,” he says. “Stay with my wife, watch my kids grow… get them that dog - Lisa would have loved that.”

 

“I'm sorry,” she whispers.

 

“Don't be,” he says.

 

_Don't take it on. It's my cross to bear._

 

~~~

 

As he suspected it would, the dog shows its face when they're leaving, but not even treats can entice it closer. It watches them both warily and when it steps into the light he realises he doesn't have much time left. Its limp is worse and its skin looks like it's on fire, eyes dull. There’s something very unpleasant caked to its hind legs and he can smell it even from across the street. And it's not just dirt and shit. It's decay.

 

They try to corner it, Karen going one way and calling to it, distracting it while he tries to sneak up behind it.

 

It almost works until it doesn't. He always knew the dog was too smart and she turns tail and limps off into the shadows.

 

“You'll get her,” Karen says back at the car and he nods but he doesn't believe her.

 

Time’s running out. For everyone.

 

~~~

 

He follows her home, waits until she's out of the car and already halfway up the steps to her building before he switches the truck off and follows her.

 

“Karen…”

 

She turns then, hair blowing in the night wind, and eyes brilliant as the stars.

 

He can’t look at her enough. He can never look at her enough.

 

She frowns, starts to say something and he doesn't miss the way her hand goes to her purse, presses against the .380 he knows she's hiding in there.

 

But she doesn't need to worry. There’s no danger. He's got this.

 

Maybe.

 

He stops for a second when he draws level with her, just a second to watch her, to  _see_ her. She's still mostly shadows and silver but she's also the brightest thing in the whole world.

 

“Why…?” her voice is husky, thick and she clears her throat and starts again. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

 

_Like what Karen? Like you're everything? Maybe it's because you are._

 

( _Ask her out. Make it official._ )

 

He's not going to do that.

 

But he does take her hand, pull her close and bury his head in her throat. He does breathe her in and when he feels her hands on him, creeping up his sides and over his shoulders, he knows she feels it too.

 

He's not sure how long they stay like that, the night wind whipping around their legs and rushing through her hair, the shadows growing darker and the moonlight impossibly lighter. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter at all. She's warm like a little fire and she’s swaying to some music he can almost believe he hears too.

 

“Thank you,” he says. “Thank you.”

 

She doesn't ask for what. She pulls him closer, holds him so tight he wonders that his bones don't break, wonders that she hasn’t ground them to dust along with the rest of him. She could crawl inside him and tear him apart and he wouldn't mind. He'd welcome it. It's penance but it's not penance at all.

 

_I love you. I love you. I love you._

 

He thinks she might love him back. He wouldn’t want to assume how, he wouldn’t want to jump to any conclusions but he feels it in the way she burrows into him, how her hands feel like they’re keeping him together.

 

_(What would you do if my heart was torn in two?)_

 

She thinks she can save him. She doesn’t know she already did.

 

They don't speak when he pulls away, they don't need to, but there are tears shimmering in her eyes. He's pretty sure there's some in his too. Pretty sure if he stays for much longer he could start a deluge and then a flood.

 

Sometimes his whole life feels almost Biblical. Sometimes it doesn't feel like that at all.

 

His fingers slide through hers as goes back down the stairs and her eyes bore into the back of his head much like the bullet that's still there.

 

He gets into his truck, turns the key and finds it in himself to look back at her.

 

She's beautiful.

 

She bites her lip and then raises a hand, waves once before making her way inside and taking every part of him worth anything with her.


	8. Chapter 8

He hunts. He's not used to this particular kind of chase. He's bad at it. Give him rapists and murderers, paedophiles and flesh traffickers. Give him gangsters and dog fighters, pimps and johns that get handsy. But not lost souls. Not things that deserve better than what they've got. He can't find those.

 

Except when he can.

 

He found Karen Page. He doesn't think a man gets blessed twice like that.

 

Except he did that too.

 

But the dog is nowhere to be found. He drives until the tank is almost empty and the dawn light is dim and grey on the horizon.

 

He has breakfast at his hipster coffee shop and drives some more. He thinks maybe in the sunlight things will be better but they aren't.

 

He asks a few people if they've seen her.

 

_Yes ma'am she's about so high. Lot of mange. Probably smell her before you see her. Really bad shape._

 

_You ain't seen her? Nah that's alright. Can you let me know if you do? Here's my number. I'm just down the street._

 

And so it goes. And it goes and it goes.

 

He wonders how much of this is about the dog and how much is about not wanting to be alone with himself in his apartment and the smell of Karen on his skin. He didn’t think moonlight could have a smell. He didn’t think goodness could either but it does and he never wants to lose it.

 

When he eventually gets home, it's almost midday and he's exhausted but the last thing he wants to do is sleep.

 

He stands in the alley. As always the food is gone and the blanket is rumpled but there’s no sign of the dog.

 

_Come on dog. Come on._

 

Somewhere, under the sounds of the Saturday traffic and the general hubbub of the city, he thinks he hears a low bark. He can’t be sure. His vision is swimming and maybe his ears also aren’t what they used to be. Maybe it’s because all he can concentrate on is how his name sounds when it rolls off Karen's tongue like something gentle and important. Something with gravitas and meaning.

 

_I love you. I love you._

 

He hears it bark again, so he sighs and gets back in his truck. He drives for another hour, maybe two, until he realises that if he carries on he’s either going to hurt himself or someone else. His eyes are heavy with sleep and the rest of him is heavy with her, and he’ll do nothing for anyone if he ends up in a mess of twisted rubber and metal on the roadside.

 

He drives back to his apartment, goes inside and falls fully clothed onto his bed and just before sleep takes him, just before he fades out of consciousness and into Karen Page’s blue eyes, he hears another bark.

 

_Save me._

 

_Yeah I’m trying, dog. I’m trying, but sometimes we need to save ourselves too._

 

~~~

 

Sunday is much the same. He wakes up with the smell of her still on his skin and stumbles into the shower. He’s exhausted - bone-weary in a way he’s only really felt once in his life before. And no, it’s not the same as his last night at home, as his last moments with Maria, but it’s in the same sphere. It has the same quality if not the same intensity.

 

He feels hollowed out, like someone took a scalpel to the inside of his skin, carved out his bones and muscles and left him nothing but an empty husk, waiting to be filled with something new. 

 

He doesn't dare imagine what that could be.

 

~~~

 

He realises he was wrong. He thought that if he breathed her sweet honey cream in, he might leave nothing of her behind, but it was the other way around. She has him. She has every single part of him.

 

_I love you. I love you so much._

 

~~~

 

 

 

He eats - he doesn’t remember what - and he makes himself a flask of coffee.

 

There’s a message from her on his phone.

 

“Take care”

 

He answers.

 

“You too.”

 

What he really wants to say is “I love you.” But he’s chickenshit and he doesn’t.

 

He gets in the truck and he drives for hours looking for the dog but all he gets out of it is another empty tank of gas and a reminder that Hell’s Kitchen has places even he doesn’t really want to go.


	9. Chapter 9

He devises a plan.

 

She might only show up when Karen is around, there might be some kind of magic going on here that he doesn't understand but he can't rely on that. He can't wait for it to happen. He goes into the alley, spends the whole of Monday blocking up anything that could conceivably be considered a hole or escape route. Some of his neighbours see him and look at him like he’s quite mad, but they don’t say anything. He doesn’t know if they know who he is - if they know what he’s done - but he keeps to himself mostly and he’s always polite when he speaks to them and they’ve seen him with the pretty blonde lady more than often enough to know that he can’t be all bad. He wonders if he’s stealing goodness he’s not entitled to. He wonders if Karen even knows.

 

When he’s satisfied that nothing bigger than a roach could escape through the back of the alley, he goes down to the local pet store and buys one of the cage traps he’s been avoiding. He knows he doesn’t have time on his side but it’s the best he can do, considering this dog isn’t particularly into the idea of making things easy.

 

He doesn’t want to have to use it. He’s hoping that with blocking off the alley that somehow he can catch her without having to resort to traps or even worse, tranquilisers. He's hoping something happens and she's willing to let herself be helped. Still he knows it’s too late to be leaving anything up to chance. He needs to pull out all the stops and prepare for every eventuality. Wear braces and a belt, as Maria was fond of saying.

 

He puts the cage near the dumpster, doesn’t set the trip but throws a few treats inside and puts the bowls back in their normal spot.

 

He should have done this earlier. He shouldn’t have waited until it got this bad.

 

In the afternoon he drives around a little more but, as he suspected, it accomplishes nothing. No one has seen her. No one knows where she is and there’s a million places she could be hiding.

 

Later he almost decides to skip group so he can search some more but at the last minute he changes his mind and goes anyway. Whatever else is happening in his life he needs to heal and he needs to deal and there’s a blonde with blue eyes that would be so disappointed in him if he neglected that. After everything he owes it to himself, but maybe he owes it to her just as much.

 

So he sits there, drinking shitty coffee and listening to everyone’s stories, thinking about the silver linings he has that the others don’t. Things like time and money... limbs.

 

 _Karen_. Always Karen.

 

And when it’s his turn to speak he tries to wave them off but Curtis presses gently and he finds it’s not so hard. He finds that if he thinks about her, he can say the words.

 

“There’s someone,” he says. “Someone I’ve known for a while now…”

 

He looks at their faces and no one jokes, no one judges, so he carries on.

 

“She’s special - smart, kind. She kicks my ass, and when I’m with her it feels like everything could be okay.”

 

“She feel the same way?” Tony, with his red face and friendly smile and bad taste in clothes. His old lady left him when he came back from Baghdad, said he was different. He was. He is. He owns it.

 

Frank shrugs. “Maybe. I don’t know. If she does, she doesn’t want to be disrespectful I guess.”

 

“How does that make you feel?” Curtis with his friendly eyes, his knowing smile.

 

“Terrified. Guilty..." he takes a gulp of his coffee. "... Like the luckiest fucker on earth.”

 

There’s a couple of good-natured snorts.

 

“I was done after Maria,” he says. “One and done. That’s me. Always. I never expected a second round. Never thought it could do this. I didn’t see it coming…”

 

“And?” Curtis presses.

 

“And now I don’t know what to do… I’m scared.”

 

“Of what?”

 

He glares at Curt over his cup. Maybe this was a bad idea. This is a group for veterans, for people who’ve lost families and limbs, who wake up in the middle of the night thinking they’re in a warzone and strangling whoever is sleeping next to them before they remember they’re not. This isn’t the place to talk about Karen Page.

 

But Curt isn’t letting it go. “Come on Frank, what are you afraid of?”

 

_Chickenshit._

 

He sighs. “That I ain’t good enough.”

 

“Nah,” Curt says. “You know that’s for her to decide and if she’s as smart as you say then she’ll make the right choice. And if she decides you are, then you will be. When you put your mind to something, there ain’t no talking you out of it, so even if she’s wrong, even if you _ain’t_ good enough, if she lets you try to be, you will be… so what are you really afraid of?”

 

_Go fuck yourself Curt. Seriously. You and fucking David._

 

Another sip of coffee and he runs a hand through his hair, looks around at the faces watching him.

 

“You fucking assholes,” he says, shaking his head.

 

“Yeah,” Curtis nods, a small smile tugging at the corners of his lips. “That’s true, but you ain’t getting out of it that easy. So what are you afraid of?”

 

_Everything. Everything about her and me. I’m scared of the whole world and everything in it and a few things that aren’t in it as well._

 

“I’m afraid I’m gonna lose her too.”

 

Curtis nods slowly, but it’s Tony that answers.

 

“If you’re gonna lose her, you’re gonna lose her. Ain’t nothing you can do about that,” he leans forward in his chair. “But you gotta ask yourself if you lost her today, right now - if you got a call this second that said something happened and she was gone, would it hurt you any less than if you were with her? If she knew for certain how you feel and you knew how she felt? Do you think you don’t love her enough now so that if the worst happened you could just shake it off?” He pauses and for a second it's like he's not talking about Frank at all. “One thing I know now is fear ain't the opposite of love Frank but it sure as shit gets in the way.”

 

That’s true. It’s more true than he realised. He loves her more each day. It’s been an upward swing since the day he met her and that isn’t going to change no matter what the exact status of their relationship is.

 

He shakes his head. He’s too far gone for that. Has been for a long time.

 

“Only one thing you can do then,”Curtis says.

 

“Yeah, what’s that?”

 

“Just love her, man. Just love her. You’re already doing it. It ain’t hard.”

 

No it ain’t. It ain’t hard at all.


	10. Chapter 10

_ Just love her. _

 

It’s what he’s been doing for so long. And the problem with feeling like it’s a possibility, feeling like he’s  _ allowed _ , is all the things that come with it.

 

It’s worse than the idea he had a million years ago of asking her to stay the night, of taking her out and maybe kissing her under the stars. No, this is Christmas and birthdays. This is Thanksgiving and vacations - vacations that go further than just California or the seaside. This is Karen Page holding his hand while they explore the cobblestone streets of Rome or medieval corridors of Prague. This is a trip down the Seine or up the Danube. This is Karen Page in a bikini on a Bangkok beach. 

 

And then it gets worse. It gets so much worse because his mind goes to places it shouldn’t. It’s her naked in their bed, nails scraping down his back, as she says his name and he sobs hers. It’s a big white wedding and then a honeymoon in Hawaii where they see little of the sights and more of the inside of their cabin than they should. It’s a house in the suburbs with a swing set. 

 

He’s getting ahead of himself. He knows he is. It’s enough just to love her. For now it’s enough and none of these other things are anything but daydreams. Fantasy. But it scares him how easy it is to have them, how easy it is to get lost in them and build on them until they’re as vivid as the moment he lost everything at a carousel of painted ponies.

 

What he doesn’t fail to notice is that in every scenario, in every agonising imagining that he knows is as unlikely as the one before and the one after, the dog is there. She’s there and she’s happy and she has no mange and her legs are strong.

 

He hopes that isn’t as much of a fantasy as the rest of it.

 

~~~

 

On Tuesday morning the food is gone and so are the treats in the cage trap. This is good. This is positive. If she gets used to the trap now there’s the chance that in a day or two he can set it and she won’t balk at going in.

 

He spends most of the day wandering around the neighbourhood again, looking under houses and down alleyways, scouring the parks and forcing himself to look for roadkill on the busier streets. It’s not that he doesn’t find any, but they’re not dogs and they’re not her.

 

He leaves more treats in the cage, refills the bowls. He tries sitting in the window all night again, watches the shadows get longer and darker, listens to the traffic get heavier and then lighter and finally the hush that settles over the city in the early hours of the morning. He stays there until his phone says 4:31 am and then he goes out into the alley. The treats are gone and so is the food and there’s no sign of the dog and he can’t for the life of him think how she’s doing this - how she must have sneaked in when he was in the bathroom or taking his dinner plate to the kitchen; how she must have got out much the same way.

 

She’s too smart for him.

 

All his girls are too smart for him.

 


	11. Chapter 11

_ Babe, you’re the love of my life. You are. You know this. I love you so much, I feel like I’m fucking dying every day you’re not here.  _

 

_ But I guess that’s how it is now. You ain’t here. You ain’t been here for a long time. You ain’t gonna be here again either. _

 

_ There’s someone though. There’s someone that is here. And she ain’t you babe, because no one could ever be you. And you ain’t her either because you two - you and her - you’re so different. Except you know, that thing where you both rip my heart out and stamp on it, feed it to a dog, climb inside me and make me feel like I’m never gonna recover but I don’t wanna recover either.  _

 

_ Yeah.  _

 

_ That. _

 

_ You’re both like that. _

 

_ She’s good and she’s kind and she loves me even when I ain’t all that lovable. She’s gentle and she’s sweet and she’s cruel as a goddamn switchblade.  _

 

_ I guess what I’m saying Maria is that I love her. I do. And I’m so fucking sorry. I never thought I could do it again. I didn’t think that I had that in me. I never  _ wanted  _ to have it in me. _

 

_ … _

 

_ But I do. I do and I don’t wanna pretend I don’t anymore. _

 

_ So babe, I guess what I am asking is, is it okay?  _

 

_ I need you to tell me it's okay. _

 

The peonies flutter in the breeze against the headstone. 

 

They’ll die soon.

 

Maria died long ago.


	12. Chapter 12

He barely sleeps that night, plagued by strange dreams and worry that roils in his belly and makes him feel cold and sweaty all at the same time. 

 

On Thursday he’s tired and irritable and not even his hipster coffee joint and its great eggs and better coffee can fix that. He walks around in a haze for most of the day. He feels clumsy and slow and he wonders if he's not getting sick.

 

That evening, he sets the trap for the first time. It’s simple really - a small trip switch that’ll lock the cage behind the dog once she’s inside. All she has to do is stand on it. He tests it a couple of times, makes sure he moves the contraption out of the elements in case she ends up spending the night in there. With any luck, he won’t need Karen and her dog-whispering magic on Friday. With any luck, by the time she comes knocking on his door with his heart in her hands and bag of takeout over her arm, he’ll have a dog. 

 

He’s not getting a pet. He’s saving a life.

 

He tells himself a lot of things.

 

He goes to group - he doesn’t go early for the gym and he doesn’t stay late to help Curt pack up. Doesn’t mean Curt doesn’t ask about Karen, doesn’t mean he doesn’t press.

 

“Just tell her Frank. Just tell her.”

 

“What if she doesn’t want to know?”

 

Curt snorts. “She already knows, asshole.”

 

“Then why do I need to tell her?” Yeah, he can be an asshole too.

 

“You know why.”

 

He does. He always has.

 

~~~

 

Thursday night is also bad. He struggles to sleep - his mattress about as comfortable as a bag of rocks - and when he eventually falls into that half oblivion that doesn’t feel like sleep at all, he dreams.

 

First it’s the painted ponies and Maria’s pretty dress turning red. It’s Junior lying like roadkill on the ground and his hands slippery with Lisa’s blood as her pretty face falls apart in his hands. He hears the gunshots over and over and wakes up in a cold sweat convinced he can still hear them somewhere in the night.

 

He gets up, drinks some water, checks the trap which hasn’t been sprung - the food is untouched - and then paces the lounge until he feels well enough to go back to bed.

 

And then it starts all over again, but this time it’s not Maria and it’s not Lisa. It’s not Junior either. It’s Karen and he’s too late to save her. Schoonover’s bullets rip through her body and she bleeds out in his arms and as she does all she says is “You. This is on you.”

 

Another sound of bullets that linger beyond the dream, another glass of water and some more pacing. The trap still hasn’t been sprung.

 

Back to bed. More dreams. Lewis this time. Lewis detonating that bomb and Karen Page’s blood rains down on him like some kind of unholy manna.

 

He wakes up screaming, hell and gunsmoke in the air, all his failures coming together into one huge, ugly monster that takes longer to dissipate than it should and when it does, it feels like his entire being drains out with it. 

 

He sits on his bed shivering and sweating, tears streaming down his cheeks. 

 

He doesn't think he'll ever be whole again.

 

Deep breath and he reaches for his phone. She won’t mind if he calls now. Her voice will be low and thick with sleep but she’ll listen to him and she’ll answer him and he imagines falling asleep to the sound of her breathing. 

 

She won’t mind. She never does with him.

 

He scrolls to her number and it burns blue in the shadows, the picture of her bright and beautiful and he’s about to press the dial button when the red and blue light of a cruiser races past, sirens blaring. And then another. So he gets up, goes to the bedroom window and looks out into the street. He can’t see anything, the police cars already gone.

 

Phone in his hand, he falls back down against the pillows and watches as the blue light in his room fades along with her picture. Just before it does, he swipes his thumb across her face again… and again… and again.

 

She lights up the room a hundred times before he drifts off.

 

~~~

 

He stands in the alley looking at the cage. It’s still open and the treats are still inside. He walks to the space between the dumpsters, pulls the cardboard out. The bowls are still full, the food now crawling with ants, a few midges buzzing around it. The blanket isn’t rumpled either.

 

Okay, this is okay. The dog could have found someone else to feed her, she could have been picked up by animal control, she could be being seen to right now.

 

It doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t have to be bad.

 

He tells himself a lot of things.

 

He goes inside, washes up the bowls and then grabs his phone, takes a second to look at Karen’s picture again before he calls the animal control and asks a frazzled sounding woman if they’ve picked up a pitbull in his area during the night. She tells him they haven’t but she takes his number and promises to call him if they do. He gets similar responses from the Humane Society and the ASPCA. He won’t worry. Not yet. There’s myriad things that could have happened that are not necessarily bad. Still, he grabs his keys and the dog treats and does a loop of the neighbourhood again, even though he has a sinking feeling that he won’t find her.

 

When he doesn’t, he calls David and asks him for help. He calls Curt as well, and the three of them scour the area together, revisiting the parks and the alleys, the abandoned lots and trying really hard not to freak out whenever they see anything lying on the side of the road.

 

The search yields nothing.

 

“I’m sorry Frank,” David says as he gets into his car to leave. “Maybe she got picked up or maybe she just wandered off.”

 

_ Yeah, maybe. _

 

“Maybe she’ll be back tonight,” Curt offers. “You said you always see her when Karen is around.”

 

That’s true too. He hasn’t wanted to think about that too hard because when he does he realises how insane it sounds that Karen Page might be the catalyst in all this. That maybe it’s her and whatever magic she has that draws this poor dog out.

 

He doesn’t believe in fairytales and he doesn’t believe in fate and he sure as shit doesn’t believe in cosmic interference. Symbolism is for stories. This is real life. 

 

Still, he can’t help but hope Curt is right. He can’t help but hope that one of Karen Page’s special powers might be to save this dog. God knows, she’s saved him so many times already. God knows, he doesn’t yet know the extent of her magic and would be willing to spend the rest of his life finding out.

 

“You're seeing Karen tonight?” David asks.

 

“That’s what you got out of this, asshole?”

 

David ignores him. “You gonna ask her out?”

 

“Oh for Christ’s sake, can you focus?”

 

“I am,” David says.

 

“Go home David.”

 

“Nah, he’s right,” Curt says. “It’s time. You know it.”

 

Yeah, he does. He does know it. He’s known it for months now but it hasn’t got him any closer to actually doing anything about it. Well anything other than hold her like a man possessed in the moonlight, anything other than wear his heart on his sleeve, anything other than give her his whole heart and let her do what she wants with it. 

 

He just wants to be able to exist with her, be in the same space and the same time. He wants this. He wants so much more too.

 

As if she’s heard his thoughts, his phone buzzes in his pocket and her face lights up the screen.

 

“What are we eating tonight?”

 

He thinks his heart might burst out his chest.

 

“Anything you want, my girl. Surprise me.”

 

She always does. No matter what they do, she always finds ways to pull the world out from under him, leave him lost and adrift and then rescue him all over again.

 

_ Save me. _

 

She always has.

 


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only one tonight, because it's a bit heavy.

 

She's gone all out. It’s not that the food she usually brings is bad, but more often than not it's takeout picked up from a chain or - if she doesn't feel like waiting - pre-cooked meals from the supermarket. But not tonight. Tonight it’s full-on fine dining Italian from _Antonio’s_ , one of the most upmarket restaurants in Hell’s Kitchen. Truth is he didn’t know they even did takeout but, when he thinks about it long enough, he realises they probably don’t and Karen Page just managed to convince them to make an exception for her. Just this once.

 

He wouldn’t put it past her. She’s bent the rules enough times to know how it’s done.

 

There’s also bread and olive oil and balsamic dipping sauce, tiny Iberico ham parcels and authentic tiramisu for dessert. She’s even brought a bottle of something red and expensive from Tuscany, and when he takes it all out of her arms, the smile on her face is big enough to chase every single shadow in the whole world away.

 

She doesn’t belong.

 

She belongs more than she’ll ever know.

 

“We celebrating something?” he asks as he takes everything into the kitchen, and she kicks off her shoes and follows him.

 

“Frank,” she says. “Frank look at this.”

 

He turns around, wine glasses in his hand. She’s holding a business card out to him at eye level and he squints to focus on it.

 

KAREN PAGE  
Deputy editor

_The Bulletin_

 

“Ellison told me this morning,” she says and she can’t keep the joy out of her voice. “I got in to work and there was a pack of these on my desk… and they were changing the name card on my door… I just… I just can’t believe it you know?”

 

No. No he doesn’t know. He doesn't know at all because it’s so obvious to him. Karen Page is worth so much more than she she realises. He never doubted her. Not once. He doesn’t have it in him to do so.

 

He can’t help but smile too, big and bold.

 

“That’s great,” he says. “You deserve this, Karen. If anyone does, it’s you.”

 

_You deserve so much more._

 

“You said it was going to happen,” she says. “You knew.”

 

Yeah he did. He always did.

 

She said he had too much faith in her. He said that wasn’t a thing. He was right.

 

“Course I knew,” he says.

 

She’s in his arms then, quick and sudden, and he holds her awkwardly trying not to drop the wine glasses. This isn’t like the last time he held her but it’s as good, as sweet, and then her hands are snaking around his shoulders and she’s pressing her head into the curve of his shoulder like she likes to do and kissing his cheek.

 

“Thank you,” she whispers. “Thank you.”

 

“For what?” he asks. “You did this all on your own.”

  

Her lips brush his cheek again and a shiver runs down his spine.

 

“For believing in me.”

 

He pulls her closer, cups her head in his free hand.

 

“Always,” he says.

 

_You don’t let me do anything else._

 

~~~

 

Despite her obvious happiness, it doesn’t take her long to figure out something isn’t right with him. They’re sitting in the candlelight drinking wine and eating Bresaola, when she suddenly leans across the distance between them and puts her hand on his arm.

 

“You okay?”

 

_Yes. No. Maybe. I don’t know._

 

“Just a lot on my mind,” he looks down at her fingers, flashes a smile that he hopes doesn’t look as forced as it feels.

 

She cocks her head. “Like what?”

 

You. Maria. A lost dog.

 

_How do I tell you Karen Page? How do I tell you what you already know?_

 

“Dog hasn’t been around since Wednesday.”

 

She frowns.

 

“Not eating?”

 

He shakes his head. “I dunno where she is. I’ve looked everywhere…”

 

She nods.

 

“There’s more though, there’s something else too?”

 

Karen Page always did see right through him. He can’t hide anything from her. He doesn’t want to either.

 

He touches her hand on his arm, runs his fingers over her knuckles.

 

_I love you. I love you. I love you. I don’t want to lose you. I’ve lost so much already._

 

“It ain’t nothing.”

 

_Chickenshit._

 

She nods slowly and even in the candlelight it’s hard to miss the disappointment in her eyes, nor the way it’s quickly replaced by shame.  

 

( _She already knows, asshole)_

 

Curt was right. Of course he was. And he was right about something else too. He was right about why he needs to say it. He was right about why the words are important. She’s Karen Page. She’s a lady. If she loved him back that would be a gift the likes of which he’s only ever had once in his life. She shouldn’t feel guilty for that. She shouldn’t feel like she’s imposing.

 

The fact is he's also known it all along.

 

He thinks of those peonies fluttering on Maria’s grave. He thinks of the cold stone underneath his hands.

 

“Karen, I…” he squeezes her fingers as the words are on the tip of his tongue and they taste like honey.

 

_(Ask her out, make it official)_

 

His eyes flick to the business card on the coffee table.

 

“I’m so proud of you,” he says.

 

_Chickenshit. Chickenshit. Chickenshit._

 

She smiles but it doesn’t reach her eyes.

 

They’re both quiet for a while and she goes back to eating her food. He takes another sip of wine. It’s good and full-bodied. She really did go all out.

 

“I still think you’re gonna find her,” she says, putting her plate down and leaning back on the sofa. “I still think you’ll get her.”

 

“I’m not so sure about that,” he says.

 

“I am.”

 

_Yeah, Karen Page, you’re too good for this. For me and for Hell’s Kitchen. After everything you’ve gone through - after Schoonover and Lewis and me coming into your life and fucking it up over and over again, after whatever dark secret you have that keeps you here in this place with me like you don’t believe you should ever be allowed to let go of your guilt, after whatever happened before that, you’re still here and you’re still seeing the best in everyone._

 

_Is it penance for you too?_

 

_Does it feel like penance? Or does it feel like the way you’re punishing yourself isn’t punishment at all?_

 

He smiles. “Was kinda hoping you could work your magic. She only shows up when you’re here anyway.”

 

She snorts. “I ain’t got no magic, Frank Castle.”

 

“Sure you do.”

 

_You put a spell on me. You chop me into small pieces and then put me back together._

 

Another quick smile and the candlelight turns her hair almost silver.

 

“Turn you into a toad,” she says.

 

He snorts and then purses his lips like he's considering the idea, bobs his head like he’s weighing up the pros and cons.

 

“I’ll come croak outside your window.”

 

She grins. “Wouldn’t be so bad.”

 

No, maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe he could sleep on her pillow like in the story. Maybe if she kissed him she could turn him into a prince. He doesn't think there’s much chance of that. But then again there’s a good chance her kisses are magic too.

 

It could happen. The world is a big and wondrous place sometimes.

 

He refills the wine and then clears the plates away, rinses them in the sink and brings the tiramisu through from the kitchen.

 

She standing at the window again. Mostly shadow, as she always is, except for those times when she isn’t and she’s the brightest thing in the world because the light loves her.

 

He loves her too. It’s easy.

 

It’s also time.

 

He puts everything down on the table, comes to stand behind her again and smell her hair and skin, feel the heat of her body warming his, hear his heart beating in her hands.

 

“You see anything?” he rumbles and she shakes her head.

 

“All quiet out there.”

 

So quiet. Too quiet.

 

He could fill the silence. Shout out the words. Make them loud and forceful or softer than a whisper.

 

It doesn’t matter how he says them, just that he does.

 

_I love you. I love you. I love you._

 

He has the sudden urge to comb her hair over her shoulder, say it into the skin on the back of her neck. It’ll give her gooseflesh. It’ll make her tremble and shiver.

 

It might just kill him.

 

He thinks he could die happy. It wouldn’t be that big of a deal.

 

But then it becomes a big deal.

 

“Matt asked me out to celebrate.”

 

She delivers it in much the same way she delivers most things she considers inconsequential. Simple. Straightforward. She may as well be asking if he liked the latest Bond movie or if he has chamomile tea in the cupboard.

 

And he tells himself her voice is wavering and her shoulders are tense but he tells himself a lot of things and some of them aren’t true.

 

What is true is the sound of his heart crashing into his belly. What is true is the way his mouth goes dry and his fingers twitch.

 

Murdock… he should have known.

 

No, that's wrong. He _did_ know. He knew along.

 

_(Girl like that ain’t gonna wait around forever)_

 

“How do you…” he clears his throat, wets his lips. “How do you feel about that?”

 

She's better at nonchalance than he is. She's better at everything.

 

She shrugs. “Okay I guess. Be nice to see him. Catch up.”

 

_Yeah. It’ll be nice._

 

“It's just dinner,” she continues.

 

_Then why are you over-explaining this? Why are we even talking about it if not to beat my heart into a pulp?_

 

“Sure,” he says.

 

“Dinner with a friend.”

 

_Is it though? You and Murdock? Because you might be able to tell yourself that, but I don't think he can. I don't think dinner as friends is a thing for him. He loves you._

 

_..._

 

_Oh god, I love you too._

 

_(Girl like that ain't gonna wait around forever)_

 

Girl like that isn't even waiting for him.

 

He’s going to lose her. This is how it begins. She's going to tell him she can't come around anymore, that it isn't right to have what they have when there's someone else. No it won’t happen right away, but it’ll happen. It has to. These things always do.

 

She turns then, quite suddenly, and she bumps into him, knees knocking his and nose brushing his cheek, some of her wine splashing on the floor, and he puts his hands on her hips to steady her.

 

“Sorry,” she breathes and he shakes his head.

 

“Don’t be.”

 

_It’s just wine and carpets. Wine and carpets mean nothing when compared to you. Nothing when I can put my hands on you like this._

 

And she’s looking at him now too, eyes wide and shining, pupils so black that all he can see is the tiniest, thinnest ring of blue around them.

 

_(Ask her out. Make it official.)_

_(Just love her, man. Just love her.)_

 

He lifts one hand, touches her cheek, lets his thumb graze her chin. Maybe he can save this. Maybe it’s not too late.

 

_(Just love her.)_

 

_I'm doing that. God I am, but it ain't gonna make a difference._

 

Peonies. Peonies and they're fluttering in the wind, petals falling to the ground. Cold stone under his hands.

 

_Is it okay Maria? Is it okay?_

 

“Frank?”

 

She's watching him, head cocked and her knuckles turning white on her wine glass.

 

He thinks all his moments of perfect courage have been used up. He’s not brave anymore.

 

“Come on,” he says. “That tiramisu ain't gonna eat itself.”

 

He’s not sure if he’s imagining the disappointment on her face, but when he lets go of her it feels like it could be forever.

 

~~~

 

The dog doesn't make an appearance. He can't even say he's surprised. All his talk of magic and karma, the universe working in mysterious ways, was just that - talk.

 

No. It was Bullshit. Capital B.

 

They stand in the alley for a long time, he walks from one end to another but it’s empty. He goes down on his belly to look under the dumpsters. He checks the holes he fixed. They even walk a few blocks together and he wants to take her hand or her arm but he doesn’t.

 

He wonders if Murdock would. He wonders just how unfair he is being.

 

“Still think I’m gonna find her?” he asks when they get to her car.

 

“Yeah,” she says. “I do.”

 

He’s starting to think Karen Page gives him false hope.

 

“Alright,” he says even though it’s about as far from alright as it can be.

 

She frowns at him, bites her lip. She’s not stupid, she can sense something is wrong. She doesn’t ask though and he wonders if she can also feel this chasm between them.

 

He gives her a forced smile. He knows she sees right through this one.

 

“Let’s get you home,” he says.

 

“Okay,” she touches him arm. “Okay.”

 

It doesn’t feel okay. It doesn’t feel okay at all.

 

~~~

 

He walks the neighbourhood until he’s convinced there’s not an inch of it he doesn’t know. He tells himself that unless this dog can zap itself in and out of existence at will, it’s been picked up, but there’s no call from any of the organisations he reached out to.

 

Doesn’t mean someone else didn’t pick her up. Doesn’t mean she’s still on the streets.

 

Except it does.

 

Pretty much no one is going to take a dog like that in.

 

He tries not to think about Karen. He tries not to think about the way she smells, the way she moves and how she feels like a little fire in his arms when he holds her. That isn’t for him. It never was.

 

He’s lost her. He loses everything.

 

It’s almost 4am when he finds himself standing outside the graveyard. He doesn’t have any peonies and the lock on the gate is sturdy. But that’s never been an issue before.

 

He scales the wall easily, even the electric fencing at the top is easy to avoid if you know how, and before he knows it, he’s standing in front of Maria’s grave. The grass is wet with early morning dew and he shivers in the chill but it doesn’t matter.

 

He sits down, leans his back against the cold dead stone and closes his eyes.

 

“You and me babe,” he says to the emptiness. “You and me.”


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for your reviews. I know it's angsty, thank you for sticking with me.

 

“You are a melodramatic asshole, you know that?”

 

Curt. Curt's voice. Somewhere on the very far edges of his consciousness.

 

“You have no fucking chill.”

 

He doesn't sound angry, just weary. Exasperated.

 

Frank opens his eyes, squints into the hazy morning light. He tries to make out the shapes around him, tries to remember where he is and how he got there but his head is full of cobwebs and his brain is dull and slow and he has no idea why Curt is here or even where 'here' is.

 

He looks around but everything seems like it's underwater - dim and suffocating and oddly nebulous - and there's a moment that he truly believes he is drowning, that he's just falling into the ocean and the salt water is filling him up and smothering him from the inside, and he panics and takes a deep, hard breath of the freezing morning air.

 

It hits his lungs hard enough to make him gasp and he rolls over in the grass, coughing and sputtering, a string of saliva falling out of his mouth and into the soil.

 

“Nice,” Curtis says. "Smooth."

 

Curtis can go fuck himself.

 

He wipes a dirty fist across his face, looks at it like it's not his and then takes a second just to breathe and for it to stop feeling like his entire body is going to explode.

 

It helps a little. Not much. Not much at all. 

 

He tries again. Deep breath. Deep, _deep_ breath. This is also okay. Again, he didn't explode. His lungs are still there. These are good things.

 

He's _winning_.

 

_Healing and dealing and now winning. What a day. What a fucking day._

 

Next he can try sitting and maybe even speaking.

 

_Sit. Speak. Good dog._

 

He thinks he might be losing his mind.

 

“The fuck you ... the fuck you doing here?” he asks pushing himself up so that he's leaning against the headstone again and feeling every single bone in his body scream in protest as he does.

  

Curt sighs, moves to stand in front of him and slowly he starts to take on a form that's more than just a shadow. “Your girl called the gym this morning looking for you. Said you weren’t yourself last night and you’re not answering her messages, wanted to know if you were beating the stuffing out of a punching bag… Don't worry, I told her you were. Figured I’d save you the embarrassment.”

 

He shakes his head, tries to take stock of his body and mind, tries to figure out just how bad he feels, inside and out.

 

He’s cold. Really fucking cold. And he's damp from the grass and it feels like shards of ice have settled into his bones and he’ll never be able to bend any part of himself properly again. His back and legs ache and his head is pounding like the only thing he’s ever beaten up with a 14 pound hammer is himself.

 

He thinks maybe on some level that might be true.

 

“There something wrong... with her I mean?” His tongue is cold too. Cold and thick and it sits uncomfortably in his mouth.

 

Curtis shakes his head. “Nah, nothing other than being in love with you.”

 

If only that were true.

 

“Yeah,” he says. “Whatever.”

 

Curt sighs again and holds out a hand. Frank takes it and pulls himself up, the joints in his legs and spine grinding against each other and making him stumble.

 

“What are you even doing here, man? What are you even _doing_?”

 

He wishes he knew the answer to that. Was a time when he was dealing and healing. It doesn’t feel like that anymore.

 

He shrugs.

 

“Come on,” Curtis says. “Let’s get breakfast.”

 

~~~

 

They go to the hipster coffee shop and Curtis orders more eggs and bacon than one man should be able to consume. Frank doesn’t order much other than coffee and his belly does a very unpleasant flip at the sight of Curtis’ meal.

 

Curt means well. He always has. Curt is the best person he knows and the man doesn’t have a bad bone in his body. But he doesn’t get this. He doesn’t understand.

 

He fiddles with a tiny sachet of sugar, squeezing it between cold fingers and feeling the granules grind against each other, turn into a powder. He stares out the window and across the road he sees a petite, dark-haired woman and two children walk by. From the back, they could be his family. But they're not.

 

His family is gone. _Dead._ May as well call it what it is.

 

“Listen Frank, should I be worried about you?” Curt puts his mug down, picks up the ketchup and drowns his eggs in it.

 

“Nah,” he says. “Ain’t nothing to worry about.”

 

“Says the man who spent the night in a graveyard with his dead family.”

 

_Fuck this shit._

 

“Jesus Christ Curtis,” he takes a sip of his own coffee, and even though it’s steaming hot, it does nothing to warm him. “You know me. Don't pretend you don't.”

 

“Yeah I do. And this…” he indicates vaguely at Frank’s disheveled state. “... this ain't you. That's why I'm worried.”

 

“Save it.”

 

He shouldn't be like this. He shouldn't. Curt is a good friend. He is the best friend anyone could have. Much like Karen, he doesn't deserve Curt and he wonders what cosmic force is so dead intent on keeping him in friends he can never hope to be worthy of.

 

Still though, this hurts. This hurts in a new and unique way, and he honestly thought there were no new ways the universe could find to torture him.

 

Curt frowns, shoves a forkful of eggs in his mouth and chews thoughtfully before he speaks.

 

“One thing I see in a lot in vets is they think healing goes forward, like it’s a series of steps and when you move on from one step to another, there ain’t no way you can ever go back because you’ve conquered those demons…

 

“But healing doesn’t happen in a straight line Frank, and you play yourself when you think it does. Your expectations are high and the work is hard and it’s real easy to fall off the edge even when you think you ain't standing anywhere near it…" he pauses, takes another gulp of coffee. "Look, buddy, I'm not saying this one incident is something we need to worry about, but I missed shit with someone once and I don’t wanna do it again.”

 

“Hey, I ain’t like Wilson.” He tries to put some force into his voice but he doesn’t have any. He’s too tired. Too hurt. Too done to find any.

 

Curt shakes his head. “I never said you were. Lewis didn’t take responsibility. You take too much, but it doesn’t mean I don’t worry about you. It doesn’t mean you’re fixed.”

 

_Yeah… fixed. What a fucking joke._

 

“And I’m selfish too,” he continues.

 

“Yeah? How’s that?”

 

“You’re my best friend. I want you to be happy. I wanna see you living again.”

 

Curtis really is all good. He really is and being angry with him solves nothing.

 

Frank sighs, looks him square in the eye. He also deserves better than a friend who lives on a hair trigger.

 

“I wasn’t trying to do anything,” he says, defeated. “I just wanted to be with her.”

 

“I know, man, I know,” Curtis says. “But she ain’t here anymore.”

 

He’s right about that in more ways than he knows.

 

~~~

 

The dog food is still there when he gets home, buzzing with flies and crawling with ants but otherwise untouched, much like the blanket and the treats. The cage is still open, the trip switch intact.

 

He brings everything inside, washes the bowls, lets them dry on the rack. He has one can of dog food left and the kibble is running low and ordinarily he’d go down to the supermarket and get another stash for the week, but he doesn’t. It’s pointless. The dog is gone and she isn’t coming back.

 

He puts the blanket in the wash. He can donate that to a shelter, maybe the lead as well. Or maybe he can do what Karen suggested and actually get himself something to bear the burden of his loneliness. Maybe he can still save a life. Maybe it'll even be his.

 

He’ll put a pin in that. It’s an idea. Maybe.

 

Except that much like people, dogs are irreplaceable. You don’t get over one by finding another.

 

Later he gets into the shower and he stands under the spray for a long time. Despite the hot water it still feels like his bones are made of ice and no matter what he does, he can’t seem to thaw. He wonders if he’s getting sick. It wouldn’t be surprising. Spending the night on your dead wife’s gravestone isn’t really what humans were made for. But then he’s done a lot of things that don’t feature on the list of things humans were made for.

 

He thinks loving Karen Page might be right at the top.

 

He gets out of the shower, towels off and gets dressed.

 

The sun is warm outside, but that doesn’t thaw his bones either as he does one final and unsuccessful loop of the streets around his apartment.

 

It’s time to pack it in. This isn’t for him. Not anymore.

 

He puts in a call to all the shelters and it yields nothing and then he goes back into his cold apartment and his cold life and he sits on the cold couch and waits for something to happen.

 

~~~

 

It’s about 10:30 when something finally does.

 

He forces himself awake out of a horrible dream and into a horrible reality. He doesn’t remember much about his nightmare and he’s grateful for that. Still he knows the feeling will stay with him like the memory of something he never really knew in the first place.

 

He’s shivering, partly from the dream, partly from the fact that he’s still cold and even the throw he pulled over himself at some point, nor the central heating, isn’t helping. He doesn’t think his bed nor the comforter will improve matters either. The cold is inside him. It'll stay there until he can find a way to chase it out.

 

There’s a noise from outside and he looks towards the window before deciding it's probably some kids out later than their bed time.

 

He stretches, listens to the sounds of his painful joints popping and creaking and his gaze falls on the business card still on his table.

 

KAREN PAGE  
Deputy editor

_The Bulletin_

 

He should have taken her out to celebrate too. It wouldn’t have been hard. He could have just said it.

 

_Hey Karen, this ain’t celebrating. Not like this. Deputy editor is a big thing. Let me take you out somewhere nice. You deserve it._

 

She would have said yes. He knows this. All he's done is squander what he has.

 

Nothing to be done. Nothing to be done for it now. He’s old and out of practice. He’s losing something he never really had. She’s with Murdock. She’s where she belongs.

 

He stands, glances out of the window and into the alley.

 

It’s deserted, empty. He didn’t put any food out tonight. He didn’t put anything out. He’s Frank Castle and he’s given up on fool’s errands.

 

Hand through his hair and he turns away, takes a step towards the bedroom.

 

And that’s when he hears it.

 

It’s low and soft and briefly he’s sure his mind is playing tricks on him, but then it comes again - a low bark punctuated with a terrible whimper and then another.

 

_Save me. Save me please._

 

He turns back to the window, squints out into the darkness. He can’t see a damn thing. There’s nothing but dumpsters and trash and cold concrete walls. But he’s come to realise that just because he can’t see it doesn’t mean nothing is there.

 

And he knows something _is_ there. He _knows._

 

He doesn’t wait, he doesn’t even think. He grabs his keys, slams the door behind him and takes the stairs two at a time, ignoring his body’s protesting as he charges through the building's sad looking lobby and out into the night air.

 

For a moment, he just stands there. It’s been raining and the city has that horrible chilly dampness to it that makes his bones feel even colder, and again he doesn’t think he’ll ever be warm again. He doesn't think anything will ever be warm again.

 

He glances at the dumpsters, the concrete walls, the empty space where he left the cage trap... the empty space...

 

 _Goddamnit_.

 

There’s blood on the cement. It shines thick and black in the stark moonlight and even if it didn’t, he can smell it - coppery, heavy and lined with that unmistakable stench of decay.

 

"No," he says. "Oh fuck no. Please."

 

He can taste panic in the back of his throat, feel it moving around in his belly like thousands of little spiders climbing up from his guts. It’s going to explode. It will. But not yet. Not now. He won't allow it. It will have to wait.

 

He gulps, forces himself to focus, forces the fear away. He can do this. He was trained for situations far worse than this. Except he’s old and out of practice and he has to make do with what he has.

 

_Okay dog, okay. We have one chance. One. And it’s not a good one._

 

He edges into the alley, keeping his footfalls light and slow, eyes darting to the shadows. The trail of blood changes from splashes to smears and back again. He doesn’t need to be a tracker to understand what is happening, to see the pain and exhaustion that’s punctuated every single drop.

 

_I’m here girl. I’m here. I’m going to save you._

 

A few steps further and he faces the two dumpsters. The blood is smeared across the concrete in a horrible arc and he knows she’s dragged herself inside the space between them. Maybe the only space that ever gave her kindness.

 

_Kindness you took away asshole._

 

He can't worry about that now.

 

He goes down on his knees, peers into the darkness.

 

_Last chance dog. Last chance. Please be here. Please let me save you. For you and for me._

 

He doesn’t see anything at first and he starts to reach into his pocket for the torch on his phone, but then there’s a furtive movement to the left and when he blinks, there’s a pair of eyes shining back at him like two pinpricks of light in the gloom.

 

For a second, all he feels is relief. Whatever it is he needs to do now, he can do.

 

He can fix this. He _will_.

 

It’s over now. It’s over.

 

Except it really isn’t.

 

He leans in, lets his hand rest on her flank. She’s trembling and she lets out a small whimper but she doesn’t move, she doesn’t growl.

 

“Okay girl,” he says. “Okay, I got you.”

 

He runs his hand over her fur. It’s patchier than he remembered, all stiff and matted, the skin underneath feels hot like fire. Sticky. Wet.

 

_Diseased._

 

His fingers come away red and even though he’s not surprised, he stares at them for a few seconds, trying to figure out where the blood is coming from.

 

“What did you do girl?” he asks. “What have you got yourself into?”

 

And then, to his surprise, she seems to find some little extra reserve in herself somewhere, some tiny core of strength she was hiding right up until now, some bravery she didn’t know she had.

 

She pushes herself to her feet, legs skinny and trembling and barely holding her, and she takes a step towards him, and then another. And, as the terrible smell of her fills him up like an illness, he sees what he knows is a bullet wound on the back of her neck, black and bloody and poisoned.

 

She lets out another whimper, licks his hand and collapses in a heap at his knees.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again for the support, please let me know what you think.

**  
**

He’s running. His legs eating up the distance between the alleyway and his truck, the dead weight in his arms not even remotely slowing him down.

He’s running. He’s running as fast as he can.

~~~

Driving. Running the red lights. Gary Cherone is singing about masquerades and true colours and charades.

_Yeah shut up Gary. Just shut up. I don't even like you. But while you're at it, please do stop the world, I also wanna get off._

She’s bleeding into his back seat, through the upholstery. He wishes he didn’t know how she could have so much blood inside her but he does.

He’s seen blood like this before.

Down 18th and up 11th into 4th.

It should be here. It must be here. He’s seen its blue cross shining during the day. It says it’s open all hours.

_Emergencies_.

This is an emergency. An emergency.

_Where are the lights? Where are the goddamn lights Gary? Why aren’t they shining?_

~~~

“Karen, Karen I found…”

“Frank? Frank, are you okay? Why didn’t you call…?”

“Karen, just listen. I found her. I found the dog.”

Silence.

“I found her but she’s hurt real bad. Real, real bad. I don’t think she’s gonna make it and the goddamn all night vet isn’t an all night vet anymore and I don’t know what to do…” he’s aware that he’s crying, that his voice is cracked and he’s breathing hard and fast.

“Okay, okay,” she says and behind her he can hear music playing. “Just hang on.”

He knows it’s only seconds. He knows this empirically but it feels like a lifetime and he leans back and puts his hand on the dog just to make sure she’s still breathing, just to feel that faint rise and fall of her chest as she fights for breath.

_Don’t you die on me dog. Don’t you dare._

“Come on Karen, come on. Help me,” he says under his breath.

“Okay,” her voice sounds like a lifeline and all he wants to do is sob. “Can you get to 24th?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, go there now.”

He switches the phone to speaker, tosses it into the seat next to him and backs out into the street, knocking over some trash cans as he goes.

He doesn’t care. Once he might have. Not now.

“Alright, when you’re in 24th, you need to turn left after the second set of lights.” she says. “There should be a vet on your right. It’s called…” she stops for a second. “It’s called _New York’s Furriest_.”

In another life he would find that funny.

“Thanks Karen.”

“You call me,” she says. “You call me and tell me what happens.”

“Yeah, sure.”

He ends the call and prays to a God he doesn’t remotely believe in anymore that he’ll have something good to say when he does.

~~~

A lot of what comes next is a blur. Generally, Frank is good at not panicking. Panic doesn’t help, panic just leads to dead bodies and botched missions. He prides himself on his stoicism. He prides himself on being pragmatic.

But there are certain things he’s not pragmatic about. Karen Page is one of them. Apparently a stray dog is another.

He remembers driving towards 24th. He remembers running more red lights and wondering how many tickets he’s going to need to pay off. He remembers worrying that it wasn’t the second set of lights and was instead the third and that he was going to spend hours driving around in circles while the dog bleeds out on his back seat.

He remembers holding Lisa in his arms while her head exploded like a red-petaled flower all over him.

But somewhere in between the tears and the hyperventilation, somewhere beneath the fear and the rage, he sees the lights of the _New York’s Furriest_ shining like a godsend in the distance. Blue cross, blue writing too, a happy looking cat wearing a police hat at the one end of the sign and a happier dog with a big gold badge at the other.

_Come on girl, we can make you happy too._

He’s out the car and he’s cradling her body, and she’s limp and she stinks and he thinks he sees maggots dripping onto the ground. His legs feel like lead as he goes to the entrance and the door itself feels like he’s trying to open it against a deluge.

“Please, someone help me. Please.”

It’s not his voice and yet it is. It’s broken and choked and he feels like he can’t breathe.

_Please._

There’s a nurse and the look on her face says it all.

“Please,” he’s saying. “Please.”

And she’s looking at him like she’s already sorry, but she’s taking the dog out of his arms, telling him she’ll be back soon and if he could just wait…

She trails off, there aren’t any words. Words are a waste.

And then she’s gone, disappearing through one of the stark white doors behind the reception desk and he’s alone and...

And then… nothing. Quiet except for the faint sound of low voices talking in the next room, the click of keys on the receptionist’s keyboard and the muffled drone of the cars outside.

He stands absolutely still, blood on his hands and body shaking. He has no idea what to do. He has no idea where to go.

He could sit. He could sit in one of those awful plastic chairs lining the room and wait. He could read a magazine. He could ask about pet insurance and free weight checks - the sign tells him he should.

He doesn’t think he has it in him to do any of these things. All he has left is to fall to the floor and wait to wake up from this nightmare. It would be so easy. He feels his knees buckling and somewhere very far away the receptionist’s eyes go wide.

She’s saying something too, starting to stand up but everything feels like it’s underwater, like he’s drowning.

He’s been drowning for a long time.

And then he’s not.

From that same far away place he hears the door swing open again, the sound of high heels on tiles. A dress, yellow as a buttercup but patterned with beautiful blue and white lilies.

It’s very pretty. It’s so, so pretty.

And then she’s there. She’s there kneeling on the floor with him, with her orange blossoms and her honey cream, that sweet lipgloss that he’s thought about kissing for so long.

She drops her purse and brings her hands up to his face, runs her fingers over his cheekbones.

“Breathe, just breathe, okay,” she says.

He can't say no to her but he can't do that either. There's not enough air in the world, never has been when she's around.

And then suddenly there is.

Her lips brush his and it's quick and chaste and so gentle it feels like butterfly wings against his skin. But he knows her kisses have magic. Much like her they cast spells and break curses.

He takes a shuddering breath and lifts his head so he’s looking at her.

Her eyes shine like Tanzanite.

Forehead against his, gentle kisses on his cheeks and he reaches out and puts his bloodied hands on her arms.

“I’m here,” she whispers. “I’m here now.”

_I’m here to save you._


	16. Chapter 16

He sits in one of the hard plastic chairs and she holds both of his hands in her own. He wonders if it’s to stop him from shaking, but he doesn’t think so. She’s shaking too. Trembling in fact, and he pulls one of his hands out of hers, puts his arm around her shoulders and draws her close, presses his lips to her hairline.

 

He’s not ready to say anything. Not yet. He doesn’t trust himself with words. His whole heart feels like it’s sitting in the back of his throat, like it’s pumping blood not along his veins but just wherever it feels like it should go. If he opened his mouth now, he might drown in it. 

 

She might too.

 

Above them the lights hum and any other time he’d find it annoying, but now it’s just there, part of the backdrop - the backdrop to a terrible play starring him, Karen Page and a poor dog he took too long to save.

 

Maybe.

 

He’s not sure he saved it at all.

 

Karen must leave for a while. She must, because he remembers there’s a horrible time when he feels like he’s been cast adrift again and the walls are crashing in; when his stomach roils and he thinks he might never be whole again. 

 

Jokes on him though. He’s not whole now.

 

But then she’s back and she’s pushing a paper cup into his hands and the smell of dark roast floods his head.

 

“Drink,” she says.

 

He drinks.

 

It’s Starbucks and about as shitty as Starbucks can be but he thinks it might be the best coffee he’s ever tasted. 

 

He’s fairly sure he has officially lost his mind. He might be delusional too. 

 

And then it’s them again and she’s holding his hand, sipping a latte and he looks at her pretty yellow dress, the same colour as sunshine, and he wonders why she's here. She was busy tonight. There was something she was doing and it was breaking his heart and putting ice in his bones. It was making him wake up a dead man on a dead woman's grave. 

 

It all feels so long ago.

 

But that’s something he can worry about later. He can ask when he knows what it is he wants to ask. For now, he just lets her hold him and he wishes he could crawl inside her and never have to face the world again.

 

She can do that for him. It's part of her magic.

 

It seems like hours later when a doctor comes out holding a clipboard. She’s small and thin and she almost looks a bit like Dinah except for her green eyes. Her name tag says Maya. He thinks that's a really pretty name.

 

“Mr Castle?”

 

He doesn’t remember giving his details to reception. He’s pretty sure he didn’t in fact. Karen must have done it somewhere in that time between getting him off his knees and into the chair. She must have taken care of it.

 

She takes care of a lot.

 

He squeezes her hand and she gives him a shaky smile. He’s not sure he’s ready. He hasn’t prepared but then again, he knows first hand it’s not possible to do so. It never has been. Not for things like this.

 

He stands. He’s not sure why. It’s stupid because it’s just further to the floor now when he inevitably crashes down.

 

Still it seems better to stand. This feels like news he should be at attention to receive.

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Mr Castle, we’ve managed to stabilise her for now…”

 

The floor lurches under his feet and for a second, he’s dizzy and his legs feel like jelly. He’s going to fall again, just crumple and maybe he’ll never get up.

 

But then Karen's arms are strong and firm around his waist and she presses her body along the length of his back.

 

“It’s okay,” she whispers. “You’ve got this and I’ve got you.”

 

_ You do Karen. You do have me. You always have. _

 

“She’s been through hell,” Maya continues, looks at him like she thinks the same could be said of him. “She was shot in the neck - they may have been aiming for her head and missed…”

 

“Why?” 

 

It's a stupid fucking question. A really stupid fucking question but it's such a fundamental one, it seems impossible  _ not _ to ask it.

 

She shakes her head. “If I had the answer for that, I’d be rich. Best I got is people are shit. They like hurting things that can’t defend themselves,” she stops for a second, gives them both a moment and then purses her lips and continues. “Anyway, the bullet was lodged in the spine and stemming the flow of blood which is why she’s still alive, but the flesh around the bullet wound is necrotic which is why she smells so bad. 

 

“And then there’s a few other things. Her mange is terrible - that actually smells worse than the wound and she’s been walking on a fractured leg for a while now but the X-ray seems to show that it’s actually healing. If she survives… and that is still a very big ‘if’, it’s unlikely we would need to amputate or reset it.”

 

She stands there for a second before he realises she’s waiting for him to say something. 

 

Only thing is, he has nothing to say. It’s too much information to process. Too much to deal with right now. The dog is stable. She might live. She didn’t lose that much blood. There’s nothing more to understand. He can’t do it. When he tries, his brain hits a brick wall.

 

“What happens now?” 

 

Karen. Saving the day. Saving his ass.

 

Saving him.

 

He touches her hands around his middle and she presses a kiss into his shoulder.

 

Maya shrugs. “Up to her now really. I got the bullet out and we flushed the wound. She’s on a drip and pain meds. If she makes it through the night it’ll be a good sign,” she gives them an encouraging smile. “You did the best you could. You got her here in time, and if the worst happens, there won’t be any pain. There’s nothing more you can do here tonight.”

 

He feels Karen bobbing her head behind him.

 

“Can we see her?” she asks. “Just for a minute… just in case.”

 

“Yeah, of course you can. Follow me.”

 

Karen takes his hand and they do.

 

~~~

 

The ward is bright and a stark white and it smells strongly of antiseptic but even more strongly of dog and cat. There are cages built into the walls, some empty, others with sleeping occupants and then a couple with wide-eyed animals watching them warily through the bars. Somewhere he can hear kittens squeaking.

 

Maya leads them to the far wall, where the dog lies covered in a pink baby blanket on the operating table.

 

“I put her here, so she’s a bit further away from everyone else. I’m going to move her in a few minutes,” she says. “She’s okay. She’s a good girl.”

 

She is. She is the best girl.

 

They draw level with the table and next to him he hears Karen gasp and her fingers slide out of his.

 

It’s okay. It’ll be okay. It’s terrible but still so much better than what it was. There's hope now. Somehow he's not frightened of that.

 

The dog is lying on her side, a thick bandage around her neck, tongue lolling out of her mouth. The first thing he notices is she’s actually a lovely tan colour and not the dull grey he originally thought. Her eyes are also beautiful. They’re big and a light amber and there’s something about the way she’s looking at him that makes him feel that she, like Karen Page, sees right through him.

 

She smells of blood and medicine and even though she looks like the nurses have done a really good job of cleaning her up, there’s still the horrible smell of decay. He thinks that’ll stay there for a while.

 

If she survives.  _ If _ .

 

He’s getting ahead of himself. 

 

There's a name tag and it says “Penny” and when he looks at Karen, she shrugs.

 

“Needed to tell them to call her something. You can change it if you want.”

 

He shakes his head. He doesn't want to change it. Penny is perfect. Penny is the best name.

 

“Can I touch her?” he asks and Maya nods. “She's not in any pain right now. She's higher than a kite.”

 

His fingers are shaking as he reaches out and he blinks tears out of his eyes.

 

And then suddenly Karen’s hand is resting in the small of his back. Warm. Firm. 

 

“It’s okay,” she says but her voice is also choked and he looks at her and sees her eyes are red as well.

 

He nods.  _ Yeah. It’s okay, my girl. _

 

He runs his hand across Penny's brow and muzzle. Her fur is hard and bristly and he’s already wondering how it would feel when it grew back in. How soft it would be. 

 

It would be soft. He’d make sure of it.

 

“She’s sweet,” Maya says and next to him Karen nods, wipes at her eyes and sniffs. “Before we put her out she was actually licking my hand. They're so grateful when they realise you're helping them.”

 

He runs his thumb down the valley to her nose, which is hot and dry and feverish. 

 

“You ain’t feeling so good hey?” he says softly. “Been shot. Hurts like a bitch don't it? I know how that feels.”

 

“Gonna give her a purple heart,” Karen says and he puts an arm around her, pulls her close and kisses her hair. 

 

“Couple of purple hearts,” he agrees.

 

“She’s gonna be okay,” Karen says. “She will.”

 

He’s not going to argue with her. She’s Karen Page. She has magic. Maybe she can see the future too. 

 

A moment of pure silence and he presses his forehead to her temple, breathes her in. He knows on some other plane somewhere that isn't anywhere close to this one he shouldn't be able to believe it's true that she's here. He should still be fighting it, waiting to wake up and find that the world is still a disaster around him and things never actually get better. But he's too tired to have that particular disagreement with reality. He's too tired not to accept what is right in front of him. She's here and she's holding him and he feels something inside him that could almost be a very distant cousin of contentment. 

 

She lifts her hand, touches his cheek.

 

“It's okay.”

 

It is.

 

He could stay like this forever. Him. Her. A lost dog which isn’t lost anymore. A family. It could be perfect. It really could be.

 

And then it is.

 

There’s a small movement from under the blanket and then the unmistakable sound of a tail thumping against the plastic cover of the table. 

 

It doesn’t last long - a few seconds at most but it’s enough and he looks across to the vet and she smiles.

 

“It’s amazing,” she says. “They’re on their own for months, vicious, feral, and someone shows them the smallest bit of kindness and they become dogs again. All they want is love.”

 

He kisses Karen's temple again and she pulls him closer.

 

_ Yeah, don’t we all. _


	17. Chapter 17

Karen follows him home. He objects but not nearly enough. He knows he’s going to lose this argument. He wants to lose it too. Losing with her always feels like winning.

 

So they drive to his neighbourhood and when he stops the truck, he’s cold and tired and world-weary. 

 

Together they navigate the stairs to his apartment - it’s late and the lights to the stairwell are out but she’s shines like the moonlight and he doesn’t miss his step.

 

Inside, she walks him through the lounge and into the bedroom, sits him down on the bed and helps him with his boots.

 

He feels useless, like a child, and somehow that’s okay. He can be vulnerable with her. He’s always been able to do that. She pulls his sweater off as well, discards it on the floor and pushes him down so that he’s lying on the covers, head on the pillow.

 

He asks her to stay then and she looks at him and touches his face, kisses the corner of his mouth.

 

“I’ll always stay,” she says. “Always.”

 

~~~

 

He doesn't sleep. Not immediately anyway. He's so tired it feels like the whole world is swimming but it's peaceful. Quiet. There are no sirens. There are no cars and even the worry has ebbed a little.

 

He stares at the ceiling, arm around her and she lies on her side, propped up on one elbow, stroking her fingers through his hair and tracing the lines of his face.

 

His cheeks are wet. He thinks he's still crying. But she's here. She's here to save him.

 

She smells sweet, she feels even better and he doesn't know why he gets to have this or what he did to deserve it. So he asks.

 

“Why are you here Karen?”

 

He thinks the bigger question is “how does someone like you even exist?” but he'll start small. No reason to jump the gun.

 

She leans in and kisses his forehead.

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“Thought you had a date tonight,” he says. “Murdock.”

 

“That wasn't a date, Frank” she says. “You knew that.”

 

Yeah, he did. She told him and she doesn't lie.

 

She shifts then, so that she's lying with her belly on the bed and her chest pressed up against his.

 

She looks directly into his eyes, waits for him to focus and look back and it feels like she holds him there for a very long time. She has something to say. Something important. It also feels like something he should be standing for but at the same time it feels like he might need to save his strength.

 

( _ Just love her, man. Just love her. _ )

 

He does. He does so much.

 

She puts a palm on his cheek, bites her lip and takes a breath.

 

“It's you, you idiot,” she says.”It's always been you… This...” She indicates vaguely at their tangled bodies. “This is a thing that can happen. This is a thing I always thought was happening.”

 

It's another gunshot. It's hard and forceful and it hurts just as much, ripping through him and scrambling his insides, pulling him apart and not bothering to put him back together. 

 

His heart is safe though. He gave it to her in exchange for some cheap takeout and she's done so much with it while it's been under her care.

 

She strokes his hair again, kisses his cheeks and his brow. He kisses her back wherever he can - her jaw, her throat, her lips. 

 

“Where were you this morning?” she asks. “Don't tell me you were at the gym. Your friend’s a shitty liar.”

 

He runs his hand down her back. She's wearing one of his T-shirts and he can feel the knobs of her spine under it, and when he gets to the hem, there's a delightful space of skin between it and the top of her underwear. She's ridiculously soft and smooth. He could touch her like this forever - never do anything else again. He could die doing this and never have another regret.

 

Except she won't let him. She's asked a question. He needs to answer.

 

He rubs small circles into her flesh, catches her lips with his own when she leans in to kiss him again.

 

“I went to the graveyard, to see Maria. I ended up staying there."

 

It's not even hard to say.

 

“Why?”

 

He shrugs. “I don't know. To find somewhere I belonged.”

 

“Did you?”

 

He looks briefly at the ceiling and then into her eyes. The light is dim but she isn't. He touches her face, skims his thumb over her jaw.

 

“No,” he says, voice cracking. “Not there.”

 

He realises something now though, something he maybe knew in some deep dark place inside himself since he started this process of dealing and healing - something he's been working towards and away from all at the same time.

 

She smells of honey cream and her eyes are like Tanzanite.

 

“I think there's nothing there for me,” he says.

 

She doesn't say anything to that but she doesn't need to. She leans in, presses her mouth on his again. Her lips are soft and, when he slides his hand up under the T-shirt to rest between her shoulder blades and tastes how sweet she really is, she shivers.  She lingers. He's forgotten what it's like to linger like this. 

 

He's forgotten so many things.

 

Later - much much later, when their lips are swollen from kisses she lies back down and prods his side so that he turns over and she can bury her head between his shoulder blades, arm firm around his middle. They’re not under the covers and it’s not even a particularly warm night, but the cold leeches out of his bones with every breath she takes.

 

He's not getting sick. He's getting well.

 

_ Save me. _

 

The one thing he’s never forgotten is how good it feels when someone does.


	18. Chapter 18

It's the early hours of the morning when he wakes up. It's quiet outside, Hell’s Kitchen not yet ready to give up on its dark dreams.

 

He didn't have dark dreams though. He didn't have any dreams at all.

 

He's lying on his back and she's pressed up against his side, hand resting on his belly softly, loosely. She's not holding him together, she's just holding him. Maybe it's time he did the same for her.

 

It's not cold but he grabs the blankets up from the foot of the bed, pulls it up over them and shifts slightly so he can see her face as the first ray of hazy sunlight touches it.

 

Her eyelids flutter but she doesn't wake up.

 

He could look at her forever. Forever and forever and forever. He doesn't ever need to look away.

 

_ My girl. My precious girl. You don't have magic. You  _ are _ magic. _

 

She mumbles something in her sleep and he runs his knuckles over her cheek, hushes her, draws her close and kisses her forehead.

 

There's no place for nightmares here.

 

~~~

 

She stays with him all of Sunday. Penny survives the night but the vet says they're not out of the woods yet. She lost blood, she's still septic. There's a lot of bad things that can still happen.

 

But they don't. There are no frantic phone calls, no last second trips to say goodbye. 

 

What there is, is a lot of kissing. A lot. Karen Page opened a door on the cold tiled floor of the vet's office. What he didn't know, but should have suspected, was that there was a deluge waiting on the other side and now he's drowning in it.

 

They both are.

 

She tastes like honey and her mouth is soft, her tongue is hot and wet and the more he gets to know it, the more he wants. She wants it too. 

 

He thinks he might never stop kissing her.

 

But he does. He has to. He doesn't want to assume anything and despite everything that's happened she treats him like something fragile and delicate. And maybe he is.

 

In a way, it seems like a bad joke after the things he's done -after the blood he's spilled and the carnage he leaves in his wake - but it's true. With this maybe they're both delicate. With this maybe they both need to wait for the right time. 

 

And the waiting is sweet.

 

He takes her out for lunch in the afternoon. The sky is bright and the world feels full in a way it hasn’t for a long time. They sit outside in the patio area of a brasserie and her buttercup dress gleams gold. 

 

He keeps his phone on the table but the vet doesn't call but he's thinking no news is good news.

 

Afterwards he takes her to the Gelato place by the bridge and they sit on the same bench where they sat a million years ago and she told him she cared about him and the things that happen to him.

 

This is different. This isn't fraught.

 

He puts his arm around her shoulders and they watch the river.

 

“It's going to be okay,” she says, taking a lick of his ice-cream. “It will.”

 

He knows better than to argue with her. He thinks of what it would be like if Penny was with them now. It's a nice thought. It's a good thought and it doesn't feel as impossible as it did when the idea occurred to him before.

 

But he's not getting a pet. He's saving a life.

 

He tells himself a lot of things.

 

~~~

 

That night, when she says she needs to go home, he asks her not to.

 

_ Stay with me Karen. Please. Please don't leave. What if something happens? What if the vet calls? What if she dies? What if you do? _

 

He knows he's being ridiculous. He knows she has work the next day, that she can't stay and babysit him until something happens. She has a life and he gets to be part of it and that should be enough.

 

She has an answer for this too though. 

 

She takes his hand and brings it to her lips, kisses his knuckles.

 

“Come with me,” she says. “Stay at my place for a while. It's closer to the vet anyway. 

 

“It's closer to everything…”

 

_ It is. Oh god it is. _

 

He can't just leave though and everything inside him rises up to find some objection, but she leans in and presses her forehead on his, touches his cheek and then his neck in a way that makes him shiver.

 

“You don't need to be here Frank. Not anymore. It's over.”

 

She's talking about the dog - he knows this. But it feels like she's talking about so much more. And she's right. He doesn't need to be here. He's done his penance. Maybe his time in hell is coming to an end.

 

Still, he finds some words somewhere. They're dry and slow - stupid even - but he throws them out into the world even as he's trying to swallow them.

 

“Karen, I can't just stay at your place, it's…”

 

He doesn't know what it is. Not really. It's her eyes and her hair, her mouth that tastes like heaven and the smell of her skin.

 

It's all these things. It's none of them.

 

“It's nothing,” she says. “Come with me. You don't belong here.”

 

He doesn't. And neither does she.

 

~~~

 

He stands at her front door for a long time before he crosses the threshold. 

 

“Come on,” she says looking at him over her shoulder. “You want a drink? Coffee? Something stronger?”

 

He thinks he might need it. He's entering a sacred place and don't all intruders to sacred spaces need some kind of charm to keep them safe? To stop them falling into the dream and staying there forever?

 

He might want to stay forever. He might not want to be safe. 

 

Maybe he likes the other kind of fairy tale better. The one where if you do eat some fey morsel or drink some elixir in that sacred space, you have to stay and you can't leave. 

 

Pomegranates, strawberries, water from the river Lethe. 

 

Karen Page.

 

You're trapped but you're not trapped at all.

 

He takes a step inside and then another and for a second the walls close around him and it feels like the scariest thing he's ever done.

 

And then she's standing in front of him and handing him a double whisky, and he doesn't look back.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so I think this is the second to last chapter.
> 
> Last chapter and epilogue (hopefully!) will be up tomorrow.
> 
> Thank you all so much for your lovely reviews. This has been a pleasure to write.

 

He sleeps on the couch the first little while even though she tells him he's being ridiculous. 

 

It's true. He is. He knows this and nothing in the world would be better than spending the night in her arms, the smell of her hair filling him up, his hands on her and hers on him, mouth pressed to his flesh and body holding his like a cradle.

 

It would be good. It would be better than just good.

 

But again, there's something about this. There's something about the waiting and the lingering, something about stretching this until they're both ready to break. He thinks he's already broken, but in the best possible way.

 

The truth is, deep in his bones he knows something has to happen first. He feels it ... and a man doesn't get into bed with Karen Page unless it's right. She deserves so much more than what he has to offer so he's going to give her the best he can.

 

And until that time, he'll wait.

 

His routine doesn't change much. He's up before her in the mornings and he makes coffee and breakfast. They sit and they talk and she always kisses his forehead before she goes to shower. Twice a week he takes her to the hipster coffee shop before work and he doesn't need to look for her name in the paper anymore. The beardy baristas take a shine to her immediately - they even change the music on her request - and he knows they look at the two of them with a mixture of awe and disbelief. Maybe even some envy too. He sympathises in a very real way - the truth is he doesn’t get it either.

 

When she’s at the office he goes to the park and then to the gym, stays for group and is confident enough to be smug when they press him about that special someone who was ripping him apart not too long ago. 

 

“Have you told her?” Tony asks.

 

“She knows.”

 

“Ain’t what he asked,” says Curt and Frank glares at him.

 

“It's good,” he says. “We're good.”

 

He's evading but it doesn't mean it's not the truth. Because it is. It is good. 

 

Mostly.

 

The one thing that isn't good is Penny. She goes into shock twice and needs a blood transfusion and when the vet calls to tell him, he feels like everything is disintegrating in front of him. There’s a horrible few hours where him and Karen don’t do anything but sit on the couch hand in hand  waiting for the phone to ring and, when it does, it feels like the whole world is holding its breath.

 

He thinks about the skull chest piece, the guns he keeps in storage. He thinks about going out and finding who did this and doing the same to them. He thinks about healing not being linear and he wonders if it would be a step back or one forward.

 

There's no one he can ask and he thinks that might be a demon he has to fight for the rest of his life.

 

But Penny’s tough and despite all odds, she pulls through. 

 

He goes to see her every day and by the following week, the smell of decay has faded and her eyes are a little brighter.

 

They're not stars, but they're close enough.

 

~~~

 

“You thought about what you’re gonna do when she’s well enough to leave?”

 

It’s Tuesday and she's working from home and they’re sitting at the kitchen island. She’s still warm from sleep and her hair is messy but he runs his fingers through it and kisses her temple, nudges a cup of coffee across the wood and into her hands.

 

She's not exactly a morning person and it takes her a couple of shots of dark roast before she fully surrenders herself to the real world. It's one of the many things he's learned about her during this time that he's been here. 

 

He comes to stand behind her, puts a hand between her shoulder blades and massages her back. He thinks of how that feels without her sleep shirt in the way.

 

_ You already know asshole. You could have that and so much more. _

 

No. Not yet. Not yet. Some things should be savoured, others need to be done right. This one falls into both categories.

 

“Frank?”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Penny? What do you wanna do with her when she's well?”

 

Yeah, yeah. That. It's a question he's been trying to avoid thinking about - one the vet has been asking too. She says she has a list of pitbull shelters around the country that he could call and then there's always the ASPCA or the Humane Society. But he knows those may as well be death sentences. He also knows that even when she's been discharged, she'll need more recovery time and she's not going to get that in a shelter, not even the nicest one.

 

It's a problem. It's a big problem and one that eats at him most hours of most days.

 

And he's running out of time. He's _always_ running out of time.

 

“I don't know,” he says. “I'm looking for a place for her and so is Maya. Hopefully something turns up.”

 

She nods, sips her coffee, and she's quiet for a while.

 

He sees her gaze flick to the pot plant of roses he gave her once and then to his pillows and blankets on the couch.

 

“She could come here,” she ventures. “She's going to need somewhere to stay where she can recover.”

 

It's such a good thought. It's so good that for a second he feels almost euphoric. It's all those Christmases and Thanksgivings. It's birthdays and walks in the park. It's the house in the suburbs with the swing set. It's all these things he shouldn't want and can't have. And he knows when he starts believing it, that's when he falls the hardest.

 

He shakes his head, kisses her temple. “No Karen, you know how that goes. If we bring her here, we ain't gonna make her leave…”

 

_ You have a habit of finding strays and letting them take over. _

 

“Would that be so bad?”

 

_ Would it? Yes. Yes it would. It would change everything. _

 

“We can't do it Karen.”

 

It's not a lie but it feels like one.

 

And she's not happy. She's not happy at all and that makes his heart hurt in a way he'd rather it never did again.

 

But then she shrugs, leans up and kisses his lips. She tastes like coffee and sleep.

 

“Was just a thought,” she says. “She just needs love.”

 

_ Yeah. Yeah she does. Just like the rest of us. _

 

~~~

 

His prayers are answered that afternoon. Maya calls and says there's a place in Oregon willing to take Penny. She'll be a lifer, which means they won't try and adopt her out - they can't. Not with her history anyway; not with the medical care she'll need.

 

It's not ideal but Maya swears the place is good, the animals healthy. She'll get fed twice a day and have a walk. Her enclosure will be clean and warm.

 

_ A prison is still a prison even when it's comfortable. _

 

He thanks her and ends the call, looks to where Karen is sitting hunched over her computer.

 

This is good news. It really is… but sometimes even though his prayers have been answered it doesn't feel like an answer at all.

 

~~~

 

_ Hey babe. _

 

_ Yeah it's me. I know I haven't been around in a while. I'm sorry. After the last time… I just… I don't know. Curt is right. I am a melodramatic asshole. You always knew that about me. Called me out. Trashed me with a look. _

 

_ Ripped my heart out and stamped on it… _

 

_ Yeah yeah I know. There I go being melodramatic again. _

 

_... _

 

_ Babe, are you good? Wherever you are, are you okay? And the kids?  _

 

_ I think you are. I don't believe much anymore, but if there's a place where good people go when they die, you and the kids are there.  _

 

_ But you ain't gonna tell me… you can't. _

 

He looks around. He's not alone but he can't see anyone here and he thinks that's right. Respectful. She wouldn't want it any other way.

 

There's a plastic dinosaur on Lisa's grave and an action figure of a marine on Junior’s. He didn't put them there and he wonders who did. It could be old family friends, but he doesn't think so. It's closer to home. Curt maybe. Maybe even Karen. Neither of them said anything but it wouldn't surprise him. 

 

All the people he loves are too good for this world. But that doesn't change the fact that some are still in it. And so is he.

 

That's why he's here.

 

He sighs, puts a posy of peonies on Maria's headstone.

 

_ Beautiful girl. Beautiful flowers for a beautiful girl. _

 

_ Babe, you know I love you all more than life… you know it… But that's the thing Maria. That's the thing. I am still alive. I didn't think I was for a long time, but I am.  _

 

_ And here's the kicker, it's not just that I'm alive, I want to be alive.  _

 

_ I love Karen Page and I think she loves me too. And she deserves better than a dead man. She deserves so much. _

 

_ So I guess what I’m asking is can you forgive me?  _

 

_ Can you let me go? _

 

Peonies. Peonies and they're fluttering in the breeze. 

 

They're going to die soon.

 

Maria died a long time ago. Except she didn't. She's alive inside him, in his heart and in his head, his blood and bones. And that means he takes her with him wherever he goes.

 

It means he gets to keep her. 

 

She can't give him that. He has to take it for himself. 

 

He does.

 

One of the petals of the peonies gets swept up in a gust of wind and he watches it as it twirls and spirals on the current before it disappears in the direction of the gate.

 

_ Yeah, yeah. Thanks Babe. I get it. _

 

He touches each of the stones once, takes a breath, swallows down hard and heads down the cobblestone path. Leaving is both easier and harder than he imagined.

 

Karen's waiting for him, standing in the shadow of an oak tree, her hair blowing in the early summer breeze. She’s so beautiful and alive he wants to weep - the only thing living in a place of the dead. Except that isn’t quite true. 

 

He’s alive too. 

 

She takes his hand and leads him out into the sunlight.


	20. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We somehow got to the end! Thank you all so much for sticking with me and for all your kind comments. This has been such a lovely little thing to write but now I can't wait to get back to Be My Saviour and Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. (And also the myriad other ideas I have that are chewing on me).
> 
> Please note I am erring on the side of caution and changing the rating to M, even though I feel it should still be T but I don't want anyone to think they're getting a lengthy smutty scene in this.
> 
> Anyway thanks again and please let me know what you think.
> 
> OH AND DON'T FORGET THE EPILOGUE

“Will you stay? I want you stay.”

 

She’s mostly shadow as she stands at the window looking out onto the street, the pot of white roses blooming full and heavy next to her on the sill. There are flickering tea candles on the coffee table and the gentle glow of the waning moon turns her silver. It always turns her silver.

 

It’s dark here. But not as dark as it once was.

 

Even so, it's another one of those nights when it feels like he can look at her forever - he can eat her with his eyes.

 

He's doing it now, and she's letting him.

 

"Frank?" her voice is low, breathy even, and he drags his gaze from her hips and thighs and focuses on her face.

 

He realises he needs to answer her question. He realises that, much like something else he's been needing to say, she already knows.

 

That fact doesn't make it any less important.

 

But his answer dies on his tongue when she rolls a shoulder and reaches behind her to massage the back of her neck - the fabric of her blouse pulling taut over her breasts, a flash of pale flesh glimmering just above the waistband of her skirt before she lowers her arm to her side again.

 

She looks back, bold, unafraid, and her eyes flick to his lips and linger there, before dropping lower to his shoulders and torso. 

 

He lets her look too. He can't say he hasn't noticed - now that he's had his head out of his ass long enough to see. She looks at him like he's something more than he is. She looks at him like he's the man he wants to be for her.

 

Maybe that'll be true one day.

 

Today he'll just have to work with what he has.

 

“You want me to?”

 

She purses her lips, bobs her head.

 

“I do want you to,” she says and her voice is trembling. Nervous even.

 

He has the feeling they're not talking about his living situation anymore.

 

He cocks his head, studies her a little.

 

She's been quiet for the past few hours, contemplative even. They left the graveyard and went out for coffee in the park and watched people walking their dogs and he knows she imagined them there with Penny. He knows because he imagined it too and he wants to bite back everything he said earlier this week. 

 

Keeping her _would_ be insane. But crazier things have happened and as he's come to realise, the world really is a big and wondrous place.

 

But all that isn't what’s been on Karen's mind. He doesn't know how he knows this, he just does. He also knows she'll tell him when she's ready so he hasn't pressed and he's waited patiently for a hint about what's going on in her head.

 

And then he gets it.

 

She turns her back to the window, reaches for the top button of her blouse and then the next.

 

His fingers twitch on his thighs and his mouth feels dry like sandpaper.

 

“Karen…”

 

Another button, then two more and he catches a glimpse of the lacy fabric of her bra.

 

It’s blue and ivory. Pretty. Delicate.

 

He swallows hard, says her name again but it just comes out as groan.

 

She undoes the last button, pulls the blouse out of her skirt. Her stomach is pale and her ribs move under her skin with every breath she takes.

 

He could put his mouth there. He could taste the lines of her with his tongue, he could scrape his teeth along her, he could bury his head in her belly and feel her fingers in his hair, breathe her into his lungs. He could do all these things.

 

She takes a step towards him and her blouse gapes open and without knowing he did it, he's standing in front of her, eyes roaming her face, as he slides a hand into her hair to cup the back of her head. 

 

He holds her there for a moment, gaze dropping to the hard lines of her collar bones and the soft swells of her breasts.

 

He thinks he might lose his mind. He thinks he might. But it would be so good if he could make her lose hers too.

 

Hand on her shoulder, pushing at her blouse, his thumb brushing against the edge of her bra and she draws in a ragged breath.

 

She smells like honey cream and heavy musk and he brings his lips down to her throat, licks hard and firm along her clavicles and her skin prickles, knees buckling. 

 

It's okay. He can keep her standing. She's done it for him enough times.

 

But apparently she doesn't need him for that. She shrugs off  her blouse and it pools around their feet, and then, like someone flicked a switch, her hands are grappling with his shirt, fast and forceful and he can't do anything but help her. He raises his head and she's kissing him, tongue sliding between his teeth and licking into his mouth, tasting him and swallowing him, climbing inside him like she doesn't know she's already there.

 

And all he can do is let her.

 

All he _wants_ to do is let her.

 

And she doesn't waste any time at all. She's messy, kisses heavy and wet - desperate even - but so is he as he arches his mouth over hers and drinks her down. 

 

They opened a door, they started a flood and then a deluge and he'd do anything to drown.

 

Somewhere in the haze, he hears a button bouncing off the floor and she's whispering an apology into his mouth in a way that tells him she's not sorry at all - not in the slightest. Neither is he. Buttons be damned.

 

And then her fingernails are scraping down his back and he's pretty sure she's leaving welts, and his skin erupts with gooseflesh.

 

He's hard as rock, and she arches her hips to press against him as he finally loses he shirt in the chaos.

 

Somewhere he remembers that when he dared even do it, he always pictured this being slow, gentle. He wanted to take his time.

 

She's having none of it.

 

She launches herself into his arms with such force that he has to take a few steps backwards to steady himself and she's kissing him again like she's been starving for him, like she's as hungry and desperate for him as he's been for her.

 

He never imagined that could be true. He wonders why he's been so stupid for so long.

 

She reaches for his belt buckle as she backs him into her bedroom. She's surprisingly strong, or maybe he's just weak. It doesn't bother him either way. He's kissing her and his hands are on her and the zip of her skirt is coming undone under his fingers so nothing else in the whole world matters.

 

Nothing. Not one little thing.

 

She loses her bra and skirt at about the same time he loses his jeans. 

 

"Jesus Christ," he says under his breath when he sees her. "Jesus Christ, Karen Page."

 

She doesn't give him any time to think about that either. She reaches for her panties, slides them off her hips and down her legs, but before he can do anything other than gape at her like a fool, she's back in his arms and she's kissing him again, small uneven staccato kisses along his jaw, his cheeks, his lips.

 

 

It’s laughable, but he still thinks he can slow this down. He still thinks this is a possibility.

 

He never did know what was good for him.

 

Her hands glide down his torso to his belly and, somewhere in the red fevered haze in his brain, he registers the briefest moment of hesitation, but before he's truly formulated any kind of question, her hand is closing around his cock and he groans into her hair.

 

“God, Karen,” he hisses. "God."

 

“Please,” she whispers. “Please Frank.”

 

_ (Girl like that ain't gonna wait around forever.) _

 

Maybe it's time he took that lesson to heart. Maybe it's time he let go.

 

So he does.

 

He heaves her into his arms and twists them both onto the bed, lands heavily between her splayed thighs.

 

She's already moving under him, legs rising over his hips, hands clawing at him - his arms, his shoulders, his back, and she's whispering how much she wants him, how she wants him _now_ and she doesn't want to wait anymore. She's waited long enough.

 

She has. So has he. And he hates to deny her anything.  But he does find it in himself to take a moment, take a shallow breath and lift himself up so he can see her. He pins her wrists above her head and, when she whimpers under him and he looks into her eyes, he hushes her softly.

 

_My girl, my precious girl._

 

She's everything. Silvers and golds and blues, her hair like a starburst on the pillows, skin flushed and lips pink and swollen.

 

“Frank” she says. “Frank please. Please I want you.”

 

_ I want you too. I want you so much. But I want this too. I want this moment. This exact moment. I want it forever. _

 

He's still drowning - suffocating - but it feels like the first real breath he's taken in years.

 

She feels it too.

 

She goes still under him and he relaxes his grip on her. She brings a hand to his face, traces the line of his cheekbone and then his jaw.

 

“Why are you looking at me like that?” she breathes and he loses his mind all over again.

 

He lowers his mouth to hers, covers her lips with his own.

 

“You know why Karen Page. You know why.”

 

She opens like a sanctuary underneath him.

 

~~~

 

“There's something I've been wanting to say to you for such a long time.”

 

“What’s stopping you?”

 

“You already know.”

 

“Tell me anyway.”

 

He does. And it's as important for him as it is for her.

 

~~~

  
  


“You never answered my question.”

 

“What was that?”

 

“I asked you to stay. I want you here with me.”

 

Kisses, lots of them. Her lips, her neck, her breasts, her belly. Her body is smooth and he concentrates on the space between her waist and hip. His lips curve along it's line like it was made for his mouth, and her skin tastes like sugar. 

 

“I'll stay,” he says into her flesh. “I'll stay if you want me to.”

 

“I do.”

 

Scrape of his teeth, brush of his tongue and she shivers, arches up to meet him. He puts a hand firm on her hip to hold her still before he lifts his head to look at her.

 

She's shadow but she's the brightest thing he's ever seen.

 

“You gotta stay too,” he says. “Please.”

 

She nods, reaches down and touches his hair and then his jaw.

 

“I will,” she says. “Forever.”

 

~~~

 

It's slow this time. He takes his time with her. He teases her and he tastes her. He spends hours between her legs, drowning in her sweetness, living in the spasm of her hips. 

 

She’s everywhere and he drinks her down.

 

She’s an elixir that tastes like honey.

 

And when he’s done, he lies at her side, holding her while she trembles and whispering all his secrets into her hair.

 

This is also a sacred space.


	21. Epilogue

 

November brings an early snow. Hell's Kitchen is bitter as an arctic wind blows in from the north. The papers are predictable:  _ HELL FREEZES OVER! _ they shout from the headlines above pictures of snowfall and iced streets. 

 

Karen works from home a lot - Ellison seemingly having found a heart and telling her he doesn't expect her to brave the elements every single day. She takes it very seriously - laptop out from pretty much the moment she's finished her morning coffee and only put away when Frank shoves a dinner tray under her nose. She's doing well - he knew she would. The paper's schedules are already better and subscriptions are up.

 

But she's not working today. Today she's lying on the sofa under a blanket, her head in his lap while he strokes her hair absently and reads the property section of the paper.

 

She's soft and sleepy and it surprises him when she speaks.

 

“Find anything?” she asks and he shrugs.

 

“Couple of places… you want a castle in the countryside or a witch's cabin in the woods?”

 

“I already have a Castle,” she says lightly.

 

She does, she most definitely does. That's a thing that happened.

 

“Yes ma'am.”

 

He glances at her then, runs a hand under the blanket to lift the hem of her sweater, and she scowls at him.

 

“Stand down Lieutenant.”

 

He chuckles. His hands are chilly and she squirms when he lays his palm on her belly.

 

“I said stand down.”

 

He sighs loudly. “I'm protected by article 92, US Code of Military Justice,” he says. “Means I don't have to follow unlawful orders.”

 

She narrows her eyes at him, purses her lips, but under the blanket and her sweater, she covers his hand with her own, squeezes his fingers.

 

“I'm still going to court martial you,” she says.

 

“Yeah, yeah. You ain't the first to say that.”

 

She sighs, tugs his hand a little further up so it rests on her ribs and his fingertips brush against the underside of her breast. She's warm as a little fire and her skin is still so ridiculously smooth that he could spend hours doing nothing but touch and kiss it. Sometimes he even does.

 

Moments like this are frequent though. Moments like this last forever now.

 

“Time check,” she says softly and he puts down his newspaper and looks at his watch.

 

“Seventeen hundred hours. T minus 14 minutes and 25 seconds until lift off.”

 

She gives him a very serious nod and he grins at her. 

 

“I'm guessing that means Mr Hoyle is going to be here in T minus five minutes.”

 

“Affirmative.”

 

“Thank you Lieutenant. At ease.”

 

“Ma'am.”

 

It's Thanksgiving and the Liebermans - bless their hearts - have got it into their heads that they're doing some kind of big blowout dinner and pretty much everyone is invited. 

 

Ordinarily he wouldn't want to go out in weather like this. It's too cold and when he looked out the window earlier, there was nothing short of a blizzard outside. Staying in makes so much more sense. Except it doesn't. Because this is their life now. They do things, they see people. Their friends meet - Foggy and David have hit it off in a way that he struggles to understand but does seem to lead to a lot of drunken dancing and some very bad karaoke - and he engages with the world beyond just the select few of Karen, David and Curt.

 

It's weird but it's also not so weird. There's a familiarity to it that scares the shit out of him because this is what life looks like on either side of a skull painted on a chest piece. 

 

It's a before but more importantly it’s an after.

 

It's what she wanted for him. He thinks it might be what she wanted for herself too.

 

He touches her hair. It's soft as silk and falls through his fingers.

 

“Guess we should make a move,” she says and he shakes his head.

 

“Stay here with you. David can go fuck himself.”

 

“And Curt?”

 

“Him too.”

 

“You're awful,” she says sitting up.

 

“Ain't awful to want to stay home with my girl.”

 

She smiles, leans in and kisses him soft and slow, and for the first time he does seriously consider not actually going. It's warm here and there's a bed and some good wine, a cheesecake almost done baking in the oven. Outside there's snow and cold and David.

 

It really isn’t much of a choice.

 

But then she's up and she's shuffling across the floor in her socks to check the oven before she heads over to grab her boots from next to the door.

 

“Come on,” she says to him as she winds her scarf around her neck. “I don't want to be late.”

 

He sighs, pushes himself off the sofa.

 

Nothing to be done for it now.

 

He grabs his jacket, kisses her again as he holds out her coat for her to slide her arms into, and then watches her as she heads back to the oven and glares at it if somehow that’ll make the cake bake faster.

 

Sometimes he really can't figure out how he got here. Sometimes he really can't think how it could have gone any other way.

 

It was a thing that could happen, and it did. It did in the most wonderful way possible.

 

She doesn't know it but he thinks she saved his life. He saved hers, so they’re even.

 

But maybe it's time to stop saving lives and start living them.

 

He glances at the newspaper. Yeah, they're getting pretty good at that too.

 

He checks his watch again and as the minute hand hits the five past mark, his phone vibrates.

 

Curt. Of course. Ten minutes early which means at least an hour late by his time.

 

His message says he's downstairs. He’s cold. They're insane if they think he's getting out of his car to come up. They’re good friends but there are some things he’s not willing to do for anyone. Especially not a melodramatic chickenshit asshole.

 

Curt is great.

 

And then Karen's at his side again, cake box under one arm and an umbrella in her hand.

 

“Ready?” she asks.

 

“Yeah.” He leans in and kisses her again.

 

_ I'm ready, my girl. For you I’m always ready. _

 

“Alright,” he says and then looks back into the lounge. “You coming? Or you gonna sit this one out?”

 

There's a grunt from next to the heater and then the click of nails on the wooden floor, and Penny peeks out from behind the sofa.

 

“You staying in?” he asks her. “Catch up on some reading or something?”

 

She regards him for a moment, tail wagging slowly and a line of drool swinging from her jowls. 

 

“Okay, suit yourself,” he says. “Leo's gonna miss you and don't think I'm bringing any leftovers home either.”

 

She gives a happy yelp and comes to stand at his side, butts his leg hard with her head.

 

Her fur is soft and glossy and growing over the coin shaped scar on her neck. Her eyes are bright, and both her ears flop in the same direction most of the time.

 

She's the most beautiful girl in the world.

 

Almost.

 

_Almost_ the most beautiful girl in the world.

 

She licks his fingers as he pulls a bright tartan dog coat over her head and she slobbers a bit on his jeans, nuzzles at him.

 

“Don't give me that,” he says. “You are a traitor.  _ You _ need to be court martialed.”

 

She is. She most definitely is. And she does. She most definitely does.

 

Because the truth is she adores him. She’s his best friend and follows him like a shadow, never leaving his side... until Karen's around. And then he's chopped liver and only food and dog treats can earn him the smallest bit of affection... and it really is the smallest. 

 

Cupboard love, as Karen says. 

 

Still he can't believe there was a time when he thought he could give Penny up. It seems ludicrous now, the thoughts of a person who has truly lost touch with reality.

 

And maybe he did for a while. Maybe he truly truly did.

 

Karen brought him back though. Her with her golden hair and Tanzanite eyes, honey cream swing in her hips. She made him see sense.

 

_ We can't let her go, _ she told him the day he was getting ready to drive Penny to Oregon.  _ We can't.  _

 

_ My girl, we have to. _

 

_ No we don't.  _ I _ won't. _

 

And he knew he'd lost before he even opened his mouth but it was another loss that felt like winning.

 

So they brought her home and he got to go out and buy that collar and the kong, a dog bed made of luxury foam and a selection of brightly coloured blankets and toys. And, of course despite their agreed upon “no dogs on the furniture” rule...he fell asleep with her on the bed the first night, and like he predicted there was never going to be a question of making her leave again.

 

Truth is, he thinks Karen would get rid of him first.

 

So no, when he thinks about it like that, it's not hard to understand why Penny prefers her.

 

It doesn't even hurt. After all  _ he _ prefers Karen Page over pretty much every human being on earth. That's just the way the world works.

 

It's another thing that happened. So many things have happened and all of them have been good.

 

He puts an arm around Karen’s shoulders and together the three of them head downstairs and, as they step into the falling snow, he brings his lips close to her ear. “I love you.”

 

“I know,” she says kissing his nose. “I love you too.”

 

She waves to Curt where he sits in his car across the street and he waves back, winks at Frank in a way that's smug and infuriating.

 

_ (Just love her) _

 

He did. He did that.

 

She may not have waited forever, but she waited for him.

 

That's also a thing that happened.

 

He holds the door of his truck open for her and then helps Penny into the backseat.

 

“One Lieberman Thanksgiving coming up,” he says as he slides behind the wheel.

 

She nods sharply. “And what comes after?”

 

He shrugs.

 

_ Anything you want, my girl. Anything at all.  _

 

The world is a big and wondrous place.


End file.
